4WD vs AWD Off-Road

okay folks run eval for wheeling Australia four-wheel drive versus all-wheel drive what is the actual difference so you guys understand and you don't body in correct vehicle and also you can shut your made up who keep saying that all-wheel drive as the same as for Drive because it's not it is so different let's get into that those systems we are going to talk about part-time four-wheel drive full-time four-wheel drive and all-wheel drive the one that we don't want for off-roading and four-wheeling and over landing all that cool stuff that we go out and do so we can get to all these awesome places I'm going to simplify and generalize everything so it makes total sense have you part time for drive as basic four-wheel drive and one of the most reliable systems of for drivers all and one of the cheaper ones to repair as opposed to full-time for Drive which we'll get to later get our guys and welcome to the studio we are going to jump back on some forwards so don't worry you'll see Bush Ronnie very soon again parts on four-wheel drive this is the first thing we're going to explain before we get to all wheel drive and then finally we're going to explain the full time for drive because that's a bit of a system of both of part on and all-wheel drive just so you can understand the fundamentals of a full drive this is the engine this is the transmission also known as gearbox and this is a transfer case transfer case is where all the magic happens you have two high just to will drive sending power SATA rear that's it that's all we're doing or you get to your destination like say to beat sure State Forest you want to drive through and have some fun on some tracks then you go to four high and then when you need to you go to four low in the transfer the case we have a couple of different mechanisms one which allows us to remain in two-wheel high which means it only sends power to the rear nothing goes to the front but what if we wants to put it in four-wheel drive high well we move the lever and this locks a plate in or another cog wheel in which means that it now sends drive to the front and to the rear so in four-wheel drive high you are a sin surely splitting your power and torque 50 to the front 50 to the rear when you're on two will drive you're only sending power to the rear that is it so the rear axle gets a hundred percent of the power but now you're in for Drive so in a perfect world keep that in mind because it varies a bit in a perfect world where your vehicle's flat and the weight is evenly distributed and you're driving in a straight line and you go to the forward drive every single wheel will have 25% power and torque but this can vary a bit because the vehicle moves around and there's a few other things that change it but we'll get set up there's another thing in this transfer case which allows us to get full drive low and this is essential for a lot of for driving and keep that in mind transfer case pull drive low and forward drive high those are the things we need to keep in mind during this whole discussion so just a recap really quick when you're driving your part on full drive on the highway you should be in too high you're driving around 100% of the power is sent to the rear you're now got your destination you put it in the full drive rivers high or low you've locked drive you've got 50 percent front you've got 50 percent rear so when you're on a flat surface going in a straight line you've got essentially 25 percent power and talk to each wheel but if you should lift a front wheel off the ground power and torque or power and force will go for the path of least resistance it'll go towards that wheel that is not contacting the ground what if the wheel lifts the ground let's simulate that what if we have a dirt patch like a real slippery mud patch or a hole where your wheel drops down and it's not touching the ground these three are still touching the ground so it's not so much of a problem because we are in forward right meaning these two front wheels are still going to move forward and pull us out this will here however we'll only have as much torque and force as it requires to spin the loose one stay with me here but what happens if a front wheel is also at the same time in the same situation let's put an opposing hole over here this is a quite common occurrence on some tracks that you may encounter with loose sort of dirt going up a hill there could be two holes opposing to your wheel because that's where we're spinning the wheels where there's least traction power and torque will go towards that wheel and it will force it to spin more we have two opposing wheels off the ground if you have momentum it's not too much of a problem yes these two wheels will spin a bit but you'll pull through you'll make it but if you don't have momentum however your are a sitting duck because you're not moving anywhere these two wheels will just sit there and spin but what about these two wheels they're on the ground why aren't they pulling you out well the way the physics works in this situation is whatever this requires to spin which isn't that much power and torque is all that this wheel will receive and this wheel will receive but it's not enough to move your vehicle but that's where LSD comes in handy so most basic vehicles that are part on four drives have an LSD limited slip differential in the rear this allows it to catch on every now and then on the wheel that's still on the ground it's like a temporary lock it's like yeah kind of like a shock system it's like Bank goes in goes in goes in and this can get you out of trouble most of the time some vehicles as bad as long as you only have one wheel off the ground you're okay along as long as you have some momentum you're okay but there is a way to improve this and fix this and we'll get to that at the end of the video but this is a full drive pattern variation [Music] all wheel drive meaning all four wheels have Drive but is it a four Drive no it's not this gets it up now so I call them wannabe 4x4 so sorry if I've upset any all-wheel drive owners we have the engine we have the transmission but in this case we do not have a transfer case we have a center dip which allows drive and power to go up and down you know to the front death and the ready so we have three dips in fact and all-wheel drive you cannot lock 50% of power to the front and the rear and all-wheel drive mainly in modern vehicles rely on computers sophisticated driving computers they sense where the power is needed the thing is with all-wheel drive vehicles they're not designed for offroad so when you're on the road it wants to keep you safe so if you're driving in on the wet roads or gravel roads and you start a slide out your vehicle will try its best to keep you safe assist by sending power and brakes to where it's needed to keep your vehicle on the road to keep it stable this system however off-road is not good any speed lower than 30 km/h in an all wheel drive vehicle renders the bloody things useless they are not good offroad the minute you have to stop and then take off you're in trouble especially on soft sand I know some people are going to argue with me that I've had a normal Drive vehicle for so many years and I've been going here down everywhere yes if you have really good driver skill and you understand your vehicle you can get away with this in a lot of places but there are some places you are not you're not going to get through in an all-wheel drive vehicle I don't care who you are you're not going to get through in an all drive vehicle all-wheel drive vehicles to the main population are useless when it comes to off-roading now I understand a lot of these systems are all different okay but generalizing here remember when we spoke about two wheels here we're a modern what would happen all it takes for this system to fail is one wheel one wheel start spinning and it's not just that it's also this cicadas systems that these vehicles are running so they're great for gravel roads and grow for on-road so I can send braking and more power to the front to the rear of the vehicle depending on what happens with the surface whatever the vehicle is sensing is a sliding out what are you doing is going to try and correct you as well as it can which is great for roads and gravel roads but when you're on soft sand beaches especially that's when this system will fail for example when you're a soft sand it'll then sense that this call is now spinning too much that call of spring too much it will apply jarring brakes and jarring power to other corners of the vehicle and you'll end up in a standstill and you'll sink your vehicle into the sand and you'll be bold and then try and get out of a bogging or wheel drive good luck to you it's not going to happen you're going to need someone in the forward drive to help you out or you'll be digging for a very long time and you'll be filling those holes with all kinds and stuff to get traction all wheel drive vehicles are not meant for off-roading they are meant for the roads also with an all wheel drive vehicle if you put one of those in a hoist and you're compared to a full drive vehicle all the components underneath are way more robust and stronger and bigger and heavier on a four-wheel drive vehicle on an all wheel drive vehicle it's not meant for tough stuff it's all flimsy stuff because it doesn't need to be strong it's on the highway it's on the gravel road it's perfect for that it doesn't need to be super heavy and super strong as opposed to a four-wheel drive vehicle if you put this thing on a hoist and you look underneath it it is all heavy metal you put a miss and patrol on a hoist it's even bigger listen patrols have really strong differentials and strong drive shafts and just strong everything when it comes to driveline you compare that to the whole Drive vehicle it's like comparing a stick to a trunk you now understand the principle of all-wheel drive vehicles and that's going to help me explain to you the full time forward Drive a full-time full drive when it's just in its standard mode on the highway it is essentially an all wheel drive vehicle so you are getting the best of both worlds here because when you go to off-road you can select with the lever order dial order button you can select to lock the center diff and go to full drive this system consists of both the part time system and the all-wheel drive system both sort of combine and that makes this the best of both worlds so to speak so we have the engine we have the transmission or your boss going to the transfer case now the difference here is we also have a center depth as well as a transfer case and we've got a fun different arenas so as we're driving around normally we are driving in all-wheel drive on a full-time forward drive so all-wheel drive this is great because you've got maximum traction on highways and gravel roads and in really mild off-road situations you can probably get away with all-wheel drive but when you want to do proper for driving and you're on the beach you're on some soft sand you're on some technical stuff you're in an environment where you actually need forward wrath which is most the places that we go to what you do is you lock your Center deep when you lock the center diff a little illumination on your dashboard is gonna come up and it's gonna tell you we are now locked and we're a four were drive let's go and have some fun that's what that means you are now disabling the sophisticated computer sending different drives to all the different wheels you are now turning it into a proper fall drive in some vehicles you still have some sophisticated system they can still help you out but you are still in full drive you're still locked to the front you're still locked to the rear that is full time for Drive so when you're not in for Drive you're an all-wheel drive best of both worlds not a bad thing to have safe on the road and safe offroad with the added transfer case you also have the options of for higher and a lower gear ratio for low in most full time for drive systems now there will be some around that don't have low range we now know the main difference but there's a few more things a lot to point out most parts are for drives you are going to find in Utes single cab and dual cab Utes and like your lower-end versions of some wagons and other four drive vehicles when it comes to the upper-class little wagons they're going to have more of the full-time forward rail systems because they got more safety features full time full drive is a safety feature it's like all wheel drive you can get a tool drive version of the same car that you can get an all drive version of the all Drive version costs way more and they're safer for on-road it's the same with four drives there's some high lockers you can get on a two-wheel drive and there's some high license you can get that a part on for drive and the price difference is quite a bit sometimes [Music] now that you know all this information and you know that all drive vehicles are safer on wet roads and they're safer on on gravel roads this is why when you have a part on fall drive you are meant to put it in four-wheel drive when you're on a gravel road and a lot of people even use forward drive on wet roads and that is because it improves the whole vehicle the whole reason why we don't drive with full driving gauged on the highway is the fact that you're going to get burned up driving on high traction surfaces like the pavement or highways in to drive an all-wheel drive user okay and this is because we have open differentials Tomac is an issue when you put it into four high for low in either of these two systems what's happening is when you are taking a turn the inside wheels rotate less and travel a shorter distance than the outside does as you can see here on my beautiful rainbow drawing you can see these lines are way longer the outside wheels as mentioned earlier high traction surfaces when turning into a drive and four-wheel drive is fine because your differential is open power can vary between front and rear but in four-wheel drive or when you lock that center diff the power cannot vary and this will cause problems you're going to get tension on two ends of your drive shafts or axles and then something's going to give because there's more Drive on this end than there is on the other end because things can't slip things can't move things can't budge you're wanting everything up and barn up is when this wheel doesn't want to travel as far as this wheel but this wheel is now trying to skip and all of a sudden you're starting to get all these stresses lining up inside your drivetrain your drivetrain being the gearbox our transfer case the axle the differentials and the drive shafts all these stresses will start bonding up and then bang so that is why we do not use full drive on the highway [Music] how to improve your full drive you can do this to a part on full drive or a full time full drive by doing this simple method and this simple method is installing diff lockers to your vehicle torque and force and power wants to take the path of least resistance but when you are locking it it is now forced to go towards the one with most resistance both wheels will rotate at the same rate but more force is applied to that side because that's the only way it can move so essentially you're flipping physics here we have the part time system in front of us to explain how to improve your forward drive system and we've already touched on lockers now is the center diff lock remember how we have to lock the center to have true four-wheel drive well essentially that's what this transfer case is doing it's locking drive to the front and to the rear so we now have equal amounts of force going both ways like these two prop shafts have to spin at equal rates but it doesn't stop there so what is actually happening here is remember how sit in a perfect world if the vehicle is flat on the ground and the weight distribution is completely even each wheel will have 25% torque and power but in real world terms that's not the case if you are going up a hill get four-wheel drive most of your torque and power is now applied to the rear because the front doesn't need that much to move to keep moving and that is where things get really interesting when you add D focus to the mix in an open diff force and power wants to take the path of least resistance but when you lock that differential the front or the rear you're now locking it it is now forced to go and send a lot of power to that wheel that's got traction to move you on this vehicle stranded is trying to go uphill we have a patch here where is not enough traction for this wheel and we have the front wheel with not enough traction as well these two are the spinning that is kicking dirt or - in the ground let's add a standstill lockout if lockers we've locked abrir we've locked the front we aren't four-wheel drive already and we go to take off and voila where else amazing how cool is that one of these wheels will rotate at the same right now so essentially you got two axles one has got resistance the other is just spinning because there's nothing happening it's too easy for a person and that's where all your power and torque is escaping is escaping through this one so what what is actually happening is yes this one here is getting power and torque but it's only getting the same amount as this one is gain because that's where it's escaping but if you lock it now a lot now the wheel that's on the ground pulls and takes all the torque that's needed so now they have to rotate they cannot rotate at different rates because they are locked it's like you've welded the two axles together and now you're moving so what's happening now is you are essentially having a hero wheel hero wheel number one this has all the weights this has all the resistance most of it and it's the rear wheel because you're going uphill this wheel is now receiving 75 percent of all your power or will your talk and it's getting you out of that hole this one here only has about 15 I'm just coming up with numbers here just so you understand the difference because that wheel is up here all the weights on the back so this wheels working harder it means more and that's the cool thing about lockers you're locking the drive so the force and power and torque is forced to go to where it's needed and that's what's so cool about lockers another example you have been stuck in mud with two opposing wheels but I Bing badda boom you've now locked the front and you've locked the rear and you are in for Drive already of course this wheel is receiving tips in torque and force this one here is are you're receiving 7% because it's got far less traction than this one but again there's more weight on the rear of the vehicle so this is your hero wheel this is what this is one is mainly pulling you out the front wheels doing a lot of work as well and that's got 35% torque to it so your hundred percent of all your power is split and you will always have a hero wheel and that's what I'm going to call it and I think anyone else's call it like this but the hero wheel if you're long is a dive into it a bit more about just solely your lockers I will but I can't do it too much here because this is full drive versus all Drive you look for a full drive vehicle that has high range and low range you are on a good thing not all four drives have low range and no all-wheel drive has low range they just don't have it they don't have that system so there you go guys if you're looking for a vehicle to go off-roading or four wheeling or over landing and you need full drive which you will need look for something that's got four high and four low and choose over between par time for drive or full time for Drive stay away from all the drives they're useless for offroad you're going to regret it don't do it you might as well get a tool drive because an all wheel drive vehicle on rough terrain on the beach is a glorified two-wheel drive vehicle a tool drive vehicle is almost going to get you just as far thanks for watching guys see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Ronny Dahl

Views: 586,802

Keywords: Off-road, tracks, 4wheeling, adventure, 4x4-off-road, 4WD vs AWD, 4x4 vs suv, all wheel drive, 4 wheel drive, 4x4 vs awd, awd vs 4wd, best offroad, awd vs 4x4, difference between awd and 4wd, four wheel drive, 4 wheeling, 4 wheeling fails, best off road, truck vs suv, awd sand driving, awd stuck in sand, 4wd vs awd off road, 4wd vs awd difference, 4wd vs awd which is better, part time 4x4 vs full time, full time 4wd vs awd, full time 4wd vs part time 4wd, full time 4wd meaning

Id: ceSFYccOzDg

Length: 21min 40sec (1300 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 13 2020