Question to owners in Canada and northern US States.

Once winter hits and snow is on the ground for months on end, do you switch the AWC control to 'snow' and leave it on snow untill spring?

 

You switch the AWC for what conditions are when you are driving. I drive in tarmac, and if it starts raining i go to gravel. Next time I drive I reevaluate and change it to what best fits. If you come outside and its snowing or there is snow on the ground, go to snow mode. If you come out and no snow, just wet, gravel. If its snow... snow. It wont hurt the car to change the setting during driving or a lot.

 

Sounds good, thanks.

 

AFAIK, all it does is controls how long it maintains a limit slip diff before reverting to an open diff front to back. You'll see the most difference when turning (where the front takes a different track vs. the back wheels)

In tarmac mode, it will free up immediately to allow the car to follow through on a corner. In gravel mode (when it's slippery out), it will maintain limit slip for longer, allowing the car to drift through a corner better. Snow is similar to gravel, just a bit tamer.

Here's what I pulled off of another site:

With the original ECu the mapping is fairly tame.....but having said that
there will be a noticable effect to the handling and traction when selecting
between the tarmac or gravel/snow options. I would be surprised if much
difference will be felt between snow and gravel on a wet tarmac road with
road tyres as these 2 maps are broadly similar.

Based on the rally car, the car works better in the gravel mode on wet
asphalt conditions than on the tarmac map. This is only relevant when
driving the car at a speed where the car is generating wheel speed error
across the axles (sliding or on slippery surfaces with large throttle
openings)

The biggest advantage for the average road driver is the traction out of
corners on a wet road, which will be better in gravel mode. On a trailing
throttle there is unlikely to be a difference as the diff pressure reduces
with low throttle openings.

For normal dry road use the asphalt map is the one to use as it locks the
diff uder braking to a larger extent than the snow/gravel maps - reducing
the braking distances by agregating the braking force through the
transmission.

 

...and it defaults to Tarmac at start up anyway - so only change as required, eh?

 

I just leave it in tarmac and control my throttle with ACS off. I leave it on tarmac because when i turned it to snow (Even with snow tires) the abs kicked in like every time i tried braking. I turn off the ACS, because i know wheel spin is going to happen, and i dont want the car to bog down just so it isnt spinning

*note* - Drive with whatever settings you want at your own risk

 

My 2011 doesn't. It remembers whatever it was on.

 

Mine def doesn not reset it remembers what setting it was on last