We headed North for Thanksgiving. We took our trusty 2011 GX460 with Michelin Defender MS2 tires (265/70r18).
The return trip yesterday saw us leaving Red Wing MN at 0800 local and arriving 0030 back home again in Indiana
(Columbus, 45 min south of Indy). That's 15.5 hours (with stops) of driving in nearly endless snow and wind.
We went by way of Warsaw, IN, since Daughter is a college student there.
Only when we got to Westfield on the north side of Indianapolis did the turn to rain/wet instead of snow. That was somewhere around hour 14 of the trip.
It was snowing in Red Wing when we left. Snowing when we saw the bald eagles cruising along the Mississippi River on the MN side. Snowing in LaCrosse. Snowing in Madison. Snowing in Rockford. And Chicago. And Merrilville. And Warsaw. All the way to just north of Indianapolis.
Some observations from the experience:
The Defenders handled the transition to water/rain quite well, Many tires that do well in snow are poor in rain and vice versa. The Defenders have a very good balance.
The GX is a trusted family friend at this point-- a battle-tested tank of an unstoppable bad weather beast of burden. It's not a perfect vehicle, but the capability in bad weather and marginal conditions is elite-level. In deep snow, it's actually better than a dual locker setup because the Toyota system can bias torque dynamically from 0% to 100% left to right and up to 80/20 front to rear. A fully locked setup is 50/50 front to rear and 50/50 L/R, giving 25% per tire under all conditions. The GX's Torsen Type C center can route up to 80% power to either front or rear, dynamically adjusting both torque differences as well as the the direction of torque application (forward vs reverse). And since the ATRAC/TRAC system can actually lock out a zero traction wheel, the system can apply up to 80% of available torque to any single wheel. That's elite performance.
I never thought to lock the center differential yesterday. It never even came to mind. The open Torsen just was a brilliant mastermind of torque routing under all conditions.
Glad to be home safe and sound. The GX on Defenders was nigh unstoppable, and it's earned a bit of R&R this week.
The return trip yesterday saw us leaving Red Wing MN at 0800 local and arriving 0030 back home again in Indiana
(Columbus, 45 min south of Indy). That's 15.5 hours (with stops) of driving in nearly endless snow and wind.We went by way of Warsaw, IN, since Daughter is a college student there.
Only when we got to Westfield on the north side of Indianapolis did the turn to rain/wet instead of snow. That was somewhere around hour 14 of the trip.
It was snowing in Red Wing when we left. Snowing when we saw the bald eagles cruising along the Mississippi River on the MN side. Snowing in LaCrosse. Snowing in Madison. Snowing in Rockford. And Chicago. And Merrilville. And Warsaw. All the way to just north of Indianapolis.
Some observations from the experience:
- HPL 15w-40 cranks just fine in 20F ambient cold start. Nearly instant oil pressure in the 1UR-FE.
- Despite my skepticism of long-wearing tires, the Defender MS2s were quite the performers in the snow and wet. The tires have 12k miles on them and appear new with nice deep tread. The siping grabs snow and holds it and makes it very effective.
- Foot deep snow freshly fallen? Not a problem.With AWD distributing the work, the Defenders made it child's play to get around every unplowed parking lot and side street we encountered.
- The only limit to the depth of snow that this combination can pass is the ground clearance. Once you're plowing with the skid plates, you will likely lose traction. But not until then. A foot of snow is no problem, I think you'd get into issues around 15"-18" potentially.
- The allocation of credit for tires vs AWD has to strongly favor the tires. AWD will not let you stop any faster at all and the braking traction in all manner of snow was superb. Not to mention that even somewhat spritely acceleration did not engage the traction control.
- The GX/Defender combo was able to pass slower cars by using the unplowed passing lane at 50+mph. Over the course of the return trip, this likely saved several hours vs plodding along at 15mph-25mph in the sole plowed lane available and clogged by slow traffic. That time savings was the difference between completing the trip in one day vs having to scramble to find a hotel. That's the difference between exhausted but home in your own bed vs exhausted, in a mystery motel bed, and rising only to face hours more travel in bad conditions.
- TWICE we personally witnessed a car spin out of control right in front of us. One made an impressive recovery after a couple 360s and thankfully no contact to us or other vehicles. The other ended up backwards in a ditch with likely little to no damage. It's sort of amazing how people can be living somewhere with regular heavy snow every year and still not grasp concepts like transitions of snow depth will induce vehicle yaw. Stay in the two tracks and don't change lanes more than absolutely necessary while doing so very slowly and with laser focus on steering wheel control. The number of ditched and wrecked vehicles as well as jackknifed trucks was more than I could bother to count. It is only by the grace of God that we were not involved as a bystander casualty in some of these accidents.
The Defenders handled the transition to water/rain quite well, Many tires that do well in snow are poor in rain and vice versa. The Defenders have a very good balance.
The GX is a trusted family friend at this point-- a battle-tested tank of an unstoppable bad weather beast of burden. It's not a perfect vehicle, but the capability in bad weather and marginal conditions is elite-level. In deep snow, it's actually better than a dual locker setup because the Toyota system can bias torque dynamically from 0% to 100% left to right and up to 80/20 front to rear. A fully locked setup is 50/50 front to rear and 50/50 L/R, giving 25% per tire under all conditions. The GX's Torsen Type C center can route up to 80% power to either front or rear, dynamically adjusting both torque differences as well as the the direction of torque application (forward vs reverse). And since the ATRAC/TRAC system can actually lock out a zero traction wheel, the system can apply up to 80% of available torque to any single wheel. That's elite performance.
I never thought to lock the center differential yesterday. It never even came to mind. The open Torsen just was a brilliant mastermind of torque routing under all conditions.
Glad to be home safe and sound. The GX on Defenders was nigh unstoppable, and it's earned a bit of R&R this week.
