No harm no foul. Believe me the people at Volvo were surprised when the XC 90 won.
I have no doubt that an H2 could go to * more places than my 4x4 Ford Ranger. However, I’m also sure that my Ranger has been to * more places than most H2s. Especially the shiny ones with 22" rims.
I’m curious Rick. Does the XC 90 have a true low range transfer case?
No, no transfer case, and no low range. The XC90 (and all other all wheel drive Volvos) use a electronically controlled unit made by Haldex.
Basically when driving down the road, you have about 95% of the power to the front wheels, and about 5% to the rear. In the event of front wheel slipage by the time the front wheels has slipped about 1/7 of a single turn, the Haldex unit has coupled up and is transferring up to 95% of the power to the rear wheels. It is not an either or system, it can couple as much or as little power front to rear as needed.* The Haldex unit is also on the high speed data network, so it can to some degree anticipate things before they happen. If say, you are on a slippery surface where there is some degree of slip to the front wheels. The Haldx unit will be somewhat coupled to maintain traction. If you were to then bang the throttle wide open, the Haldx unit would get that message before the RPMs had had a chance to increase, and the ratio of front to rear would adjust. Or say you are at a stop light, and going to play drag racer. So you have your foot on the brake, and your other foot on the gas. The AWD unit will “Humm looks like a drag race” and goes to 50/50 split as the car leaves the stoplight. Even with the V8 engine you can’t burn the tires from a stop unless you turn off the traction control.
*at low speeds side to side slippage is handled by the traction control function in the ABS system. The Haldex handles front to rear slippage.
Thanks for the response Rick. Nissan (and I suspect others) is trying to do this with the braking system. VDC – Vehicle Dynamic Control.
It works pretty well for every day very icy conditions on a slippery pass. And you can turn it off. I found out the hard way a couple of times trying to get up our driveway in deep snow.
The Pathfinder also has limited slip controlled by the ABS. But the VDC would kick in and just say “uh, uh, I ain’t going anywhere.” Nissan surely has some work to do on this.
Once I change out the shitty OEM tires on this car, and turn off the VDC when I need to (just off road mind you, or getting home), and make the vehicle let me do the driving, I think I’ll be in good shape again.
Re: Low Range - I like that my vehicle can still be a truck and pull people out of the ditch, and still be comfortable on the highway.
The Volvo does look very nice, but for myself, I would not buy it because it does not have low range. But I bet it is one hell of a nice vehicle.
I will grant you the no low range, but if we are talking about snow, Sweden is a very snowy country. In the extreme cold, some features that seem nice or whatever really come into their own. The Swedes have plenty of practice in designing things to go in the snow.
I have driven our cars a few times with the factory snow tires, and have been blown away as to just how good the grip is in deep snow.
The Swedes also have an advantage in snow and ice in that they don’t turn into a load of moaning Minnie’s, they just get out there and drive in it as though nothing had happened.
Impressed the hell out of me the first time I saw hundreds of them roaring around the frozen lakes like they were driving dodgems, great way to learn how your car behaves in lousy conditions.
Except there is always one who carries on too long and turns his old Amazon into a submarine.
All I can say it is that lucky for you I had just swallowed that coffee before I got to your last sentence.
Otherwise you would have to come over and clean my keyboard.
Former H3 owner chiming in here. I went with the H3 for a couple of reasons. I wanted something that had a bit more power than your average SUV for those times when the weather here causes problems with driving. In the Tidwater area it’s not unusuall to have entire sections of the city flooded and inaccesable…yet they’ll still have school (my wife’s a teacher) so I wanted something with enough ‘umph’ to get her to work or from work in just about any weather condition that may come up. Also when we get a hurrican through here that takes down some tree limbs I wanted something that would get me out of the neighborhood…same with the infrequent ice storms.
However I did not delude myself into thinking that I could go climb a mountain in the damn thing. There is no doubt in my mind that the H3 is vastly inferior to the H2 which was a step down from the H1. I also drove a HMMV frequently during my time supporting OPC in Turkey, so I know what they feel like. Nothing else I’ve driven is even close. Although if I had money to burn, I’d be looking for an H1 Alpha.
The Equinox is a second generation Saturn VUE.
The Pontiac Torrent is a third generation Saturn VUE.
Tell me if you think this would ever happen in a military grade Humvee.
For those of you not interested in watching a 40 second video clip, it’s an H2, travelling gingerly up rocky terrain when its wheel gets caught half on / half off of a big rock, and promptly breaks some very important looking piece of the suspension. It’s a wee bit difficult to drive when your front wheels don’t point the same direction.
I’m not sure if that H2 has stock tires/wheels, but I’m betting not. Wider than stock tires require wheels with more offset, which puts lots more strain on the ball joints and steering linkage.
It appears to be a failure in the tie rod…so steering linkage rather than suspension.
Most likely a tie-rod-end spherical bearing letting go. These are pretty universally applied, and it wouldn’t suprise me if the H1 and H2 use the same TRE’s…it might have just been defective, or overtorqued, cracking the steering knuckle…or possibly a flawed forging in the steering knuckle. I wouldn’t expect a chevy pickup to break in that circumstance, so even though I am no fan of the H2, I don’t think that particular failure is indicative of the strength of the design…just a bad part, or ham fisted wrenching. Another possiblity is that it was damaged in much more extreme circumstances, and that particular episode was just the last straw.
In my experience, the military version (can we just call it the M998?) hasn’t got a “last straw” threshhold. I’m not even sure they’re all machine. I’d swear that the damned things heal themselves overnight.
Really? Literally? I didn’t know that the roads were that bad there.
They put that Hilux on top of a 10 story building, then demolished the building. They dug it out of the rubble, did a bit of work on it on the spot, and it started up and they drove it away. They also submerged it completely and dragged it out of the water, dried off the battery terminals, and started it up and drove away. They did other things to it, too. They couldn’t kill it, so they made a shrine for it and parked it in their studio permanently.