The Secret Toyota Doesn't Want You To Know: Toyota 4Runnner vs Lexus GX Slip Test & Off-Road

[Music] foreign [Music] we've got a great video for you today because we are comparing the four-wheel drive system in the Toyota 4Runner to the Lexus GX 460 to find out which one works better for your needs this is a Toyota 4Runner it's an SR5 and the 400 has been largely unchanged for the better part of a decade now but it's a very popular vehicle in the four-wheel drive segment and let's see how it compares to the Lexus GX this is a good comparison because this is kind of entry level 4 Runner versus entry level GX 460. now this first test we're going to run a rear wheel slip test in this Forerunner because most foreigners have a part-time four-wheel drive system now certain trims do have the full time but most are going to be like this vehicle you've got a too high a 4 high and a four low driving around every day like you would going to school in the dry you're going to leave the Foreigner in two-wheel drive high which means it sends all the power to the rear wheels which means that only the rear wheels are gonna spin makes sense now to get unstuck or if you're about to drive through for example some snow you want to go ahead and flick the Forerunner into four-wheel drive high and what that's going to do is engage the front axle and there you can see pulled us right down but it's important to know that once you're out of the wet through the off-road section you're going through you want to put the Foreigner back in a two-wheel drive high so that it disengages that front axle so you don't get any weird crapping hey folks today's video is brought to you by salvagereseller.com this website allows you to bid live on online salvage auto auctions without a dealer's license you can register for free or use the 20 off coupon in the description below go find your Salvage card gem now [Music] now let's talk about this Lexus GX because this uses a very old-school very expensive way to design a four-wheel drive this is a full-time four-wheel drive vehicle with a true sensor differential and let me explain what that means a lot of four-wheel drive systems especially in trucks are going to be selectable two-wheel drive four-wheel drive four high four low the Lexus always in four wheel drive just like an open differential in the front of a car or a back axle of a car if one wheel starts spinning um that wheel is just going to keep spinning well the same thing happens with the sensor diff in this Lexus so if the front drive shaft just starts spinning because the front wheels are stuck the rear drive shaft is going to be stationary now to overcome this you have a couple of different options you can use traction control to slow down the front wheels and speed up the rear wheels Lexus does use that system or you have a differential lock which is another tactic that Lexus employs so this is the front wheel slip test both front wheels completely stuck in the roller the rear wheels on the round I've got my Center diff open or unlocked and let's see what happens so I'm just in normal Drive four-wheel drive high adding some accelerator and you immediately heard the traction control engage but the front wheels actually span just a little bit before we got unstuck which is not what you'd expect in a typical truck with four high engage because with four high engage in a typical truck the front and the rear drive shafts are locked together here I'll see if I can demonstrate it one more time maybe I can actually disable traction control to help me demonstrate a little bit better but there's actually a little bit of spinning in the front you see it's actually a lot of spinning in the front and we're stuck until there's some traction control to engage to get us unstuck now the the fix this issue all together you push a button so down here by my knee we have a little little kind of diagram with an X between four wheels that's gonna lock up the sensor differential and watch what happens now so I'm gonna wait for the light to stop flashing it's engaged now the front and rear drive shafts locked at the same speed when I let off the brake onto the accelerator there's no slippage because both front and the rear drive shafts are spinning at the same time in the Foreigner when you engage four-wheel drive high the front and the rear drive shafts spin at the same speed so it's kind of like locking that Lexus GX into four wheel drive with the center dip lock button pushed um so I'm gonna go to the diagonal slip test I'm in four high I'm in neutral nice and settled into drive letting off the brake out of the accelerator you can actually hear the traction control system work Hold Us Down with No difficulty really impressive result you know everyone thinks you got to go buy the off-road or the pro to have an off-road capable 4Runner but I mean the Toyota traction control programming is so quick and disciplined that even a standard Foreigner will go places you just wouldn't believe in alright next up the diagonal slip test and this is a very common situation in snow in uh off-road terrain and all sorts of different environments especially in ice imagine you're driving up like an icy curb and you've got the one set of wheels up on the curb the other on the ground this is where the diagonal slip test comes into play so first test normal mode sensor diff lock off hey let's see what happens on the accelerator now I always like to run these vehicles in their normal modes first you see how the traction control in the normal system works and as you can see you heard that kind of like sound that that sounds like sneakers in the dryer this kind of banging sound that's actually the traction control system doing its job it's engaging brakes sending wheel speed to The Wheels on the ground that we got unstuck we'll try that same test one more time with the sensor diff lock on see if that makes a noticeable difference off the brake onto the accelerator yep very noticeable difference so the traction control had to work far less that time so this just goes to show if you are driving in the snow in a Lexus GX and you happen to watch this video and you really want to improve your snow driving capability go ahead and push that Center diff lock button it's going to make a pretty pretty sizable difference all right onto the three wheel slip test so both rear wheels are stuck the front left is stuck only the front right is on the ground starting this test in four-wheel drive high in the neutral make sure the vehicle is nice and settled into drive no real special buttons to push except for the a-track button which we'll talk about here in a second but for that you've got to be in low range but in high range all of the accelerator thinking about it right well enough spinning and enough traction control intervention we got unstuck but let me reset the rollers and let's try that test one more time with our special button all right hey track time baby so when you go ahead and engage four low in this Forerunner there we go it's gonna click it disengages all the safety systems however if you look above your head even on this entry level SR5 there's a little button here labeled a track and when I push that button it engages a special off-road traction control system which is extra aggressive at Distributing wheel speed left and right so I get on the throttle [Music] on the ground spinning so that is how um powerful this system is it'll actually lock up the brakes so hard on one wheel that it will spin the wheel on the ground and essentially do a little little baby burnout it's actually traction limited um in this test that's how aggressive it is we'll try that same test with one rear wheel on the ground but pretty cool right all right next up the three wheel slip test so both rear wheels stuck in the rollers the front left stuck only the front right is on the ground with traction let's see what happens normal mode diff lock off four wheel drive high onto the accelerator you know I have to say you can edit we're not actually getting unstuck though so let me go ahead turn on the sensor differential lock see if that makes a difference in four wheel drive high there we go it's engaged very big difference so um with the combination of the traction control and the sensor diff lock we were able to get unstuck I want to try the test one more time though but this time let's go ahead and engage four low see how the vehicle performs in four low as you would use it in an off-road situation for low is engaged come on come on traction control figure out what you want to do okay there we go took some time um but uh it still came through on us and got us unstuck last test rear wheel slip test we are on four low we got a track engaged we're gonna see how this 400 performs now in an off-road TRD version or TRD Pro at this point I'd probably lock up my locker we don't have it in this forwarder but I think you're gonna find that's probably okay okay really good result so we have a lot of articulation in that rear end got a lot of traction with the ground pulled us right down starting in four high diff lock off center diff lock off I wish the vehicle had a rear front diff lock but you know what are you gonna do into drive okay we're pretty stuck let me lock up that Center diff give the tractor control some help here okay there we go so you can see that Center diff lock makes a huge difference as we prove the traction control very aggressive um also works pretty well in the Lexus I have to say it it's a it's a good system even though we don't have multi-terrain selector crawl control this vehicle has a lot of the off-road Toyota Lexus products do it's a capable rig it does pretty darn well but let's see how it performed out in the real world all right everybody welcome to the Onyx off-road Andre's pit cores Onyx Offroad of course is our go-to off-road navigation software and in today's video we've got the Forerunner uh running through the course starting out in four wheel drive high now this part-time system does offer some advantages over the full time in the Lexus from an engineering standpoint part-time systems tend to be quite a bit lighter also quite a bit less complex also rely quite a bit less on traction control to distribute front of your torque because that distribution is through a mechanical setup of just switching this little knob the downsides are you have to switch the knob and if you forget to switch the knob as my mom did when I was a kid remember this distinctly actually I don't because I was two but my dad told me about it um third gen Foreigner she had it new uh driving over Winter Pass in Colorado forgot to put in four high almost span out and flew off the mountain and then she sold the 4Runner because you know she was her fault but she didn't remember to engage four wheel drive and that's not as uncommon as you might think now let's see how the system performs on the trenches course these large offset divots cut into the Earth get the vehicle on a couple Wheels here we're going to start out in four-wheel drive high which is how you drive it you know in snow light off for that kind of thing now this first test here very articulated starting to pick up wheels that's sneakers in the dryer sounds is actually the traction control working its magic it's slowing down the spinning wheels sending wheel speed to the the tires on the ground even in four-wheel drive High I mean the capability on this Forerunner is such that there's enough articulation and there's enough finesse of the track control where I am not struggling hardly at all we're just walking right through this it's getting really steep at the top here taking it really slow on purpose not to test my cojones but to test the system I mean and you can see even in four wheel drive high the capability on this vehicle is impressive you low 40s 404 are like this out the door um and you can take it off-road immediately the Lexus GX has the cape body on frame it's got the V8 four-wheel drive system but it's got too much plastic it's got not enough approach angle in the front out of the box whereas this Forerunner take it right from the dealer straight to Moab you can have a ton of fun without damaging anything any fancy body work so that's a big Pro um okay let's go try uh this test one more time this time in four wheel drive low so uh of course to engage that in this vehicle we're gonna have to come to the stop put it into neutral um select forward drive low and maybe I'll try it first with a track disengaged and when we get stuck we'll push that button and see what a difference it makes so this is for low no a track and of course we've got open diffs on this vehicle no mechanical lock or nothing like that take in the same course super slow and you can see we're stuck we're not going anywhere push one button light comes on on the dash watch the difference less we're just crawling through it articulated once again we were able to maintain traction to the point there didn't need to activate the system there it goes again so good I mean it's not quite what a locker can do but it's not far off what a locker can do for being completely transparent you know everyone thinks you gotta spend big bucks for the tier to Offroad big bucks for the TRD Pro no an SR5 in low range with a-track engage will do 99 of anything any off-road would want to do that's how good the system is time to see how this 460 performs now I have the Monroe on this car right here and as equipped with the black line special edition largely an appearance package that gives you um some wheel stuff some trim stuff and the the panoramic view monitor uh as equipped 62 460 bucks starts in the high 50s you know when this car debuted a number of years ago quite a few years ago that was a lot of money but going into 2023 62k for a V8 luxury SUV with a proper four wheel drive system mean a typical Wrangler can now get well into the 60s same thing with the Bronco and then if you want a special edition like that AEV Wrangler that they just came out with over a hundred grand so I kind of feel like 62k for this level of quality and refinements is pretty good and you get that 301 horsepower 4.6 liter V8 which will just go till the end of time but let's try it through an awful test so obviously this is a vehicle geared more toward luxury and that's a little bit of a shame because body on frame construction proper suspension on this vehicle we only have the steel Springs in this car but you know still proper suspension um and then they they kind of hamstring it with these crazy bumpers and side steps and to make it look better and more fancy and that to me is a little bit of a shame because um I wish they just did a stripped out model that didn't have so much plastic on it so you could do stuff like this trenches course more easily now this is trenches it's our go-to test for foil Drive systems out in the real world these divots cut into the Earth at varying angles starting in four high Center diffs unlocked and we're going to see how it performs taking it really slow on purpose trying to get the vehicle off filter man the Lexus traction control programming you can tell that they took the lessons learned from the TRD Pro 4Runners and Tacomas and apply to these vehicles because they perform so similarly in the way that the traction control systems engage they're aggressive but they're also very deliberate there's not a lot of spinning that goes on there's not a lot of kind of bath or fuss even with the center different unlocked and high range we're just walking through this really cool what this will do now we do have downhill assist or DAC right which we could use going down steep hills but um we don't have like the off-road settings in this vehicle and it still performs so well really is an amazing performing vehicle for uh for what it is and when you consider you know the Lexus or the BMW that you might cross off with this those Vehicles aren't designed in this matter now of course the downside of this is old school V8 6-speed automatic low range lots of weight lots of weights and you know the fuel economy 16 combined so not a huge amount of impressive numbers there but if you don't care about that thing you know this thing will last you oh no no out of no difficulties putting several hundred thousand miles on this vehicle I think and it's going to last a long as well so let's try low range um we'll lock up the center diff we'll go into the most aggressive mode Center diff locked low range engaged and watch this still a lot of nice functionality in this vehicle good screen they have changed interior a little bit they have updated it looks good um very beautiful leather quality I'm not sure I like this gray on this black the gray seats don't feel very premium but everything else so good I do like this panoramic camera works really really well you can actually see through the hood give it a shot of that look at this it's pretty cool isn't it now you can see what's on the edges of the car that's really really nice but once again just taking it really slow less drama with the center diff locked as we've proven time and time again that's the way to go if you're in really tricky Terrain and it's just walking right up it you know Toyota and Lexus have have done wonders with their crawl control system and it's an impressive system but honestly this is doing pretty much the same thing just with my foot amazing really really really good vehicle man I I really hope that they keep building this even in this current form for a couple years because GX one of the number one go-to overlanders for good reason because it's just that good so I hope you learned a little bit in this video we weren't really in depth on these two different four-wheel drive systems showed the pros and the cons of each showed how they perform not only in a controlled environment but also off-road and now hopefully you'll feel better about buying a vehicle be it the Toyota or the Lexus for your snow going winter going as well as off-road knees guys let me know what you think as always has been Tommy case and Cole behind the camera on this one we'll see in the next video [Music]

Channel: The Fast Lane Car

Views: 461,603

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Id: ndsHkrKD-5c

Length: 18min 39sec (1119 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2023