Haldex 4WD

Ubbquittious

I have no intention of changing car but I'm just wondering how much of a pummeling these yokes can take? If you are bouncing a car with a haldex box through a mucky field on a daily basis will you be soon be faced with an error message on the screen saying "Replace haldex unit"?

At which point of course you have no choice but to spend thousands or do without because mere mortals havn't a hope of even beginning to comprehend the complex clusterf..k of gears, springs, actuators and little clutch discs inside in one of these.

I always got the impression their sole purpose was to make sure mommy would be able to drop the kids to school after parking a bit too close to the snowy edge of the road at which point the ECU decides to send a couple of ponies to the rear wheels for a few precious milliseconds till she's on her way in her shiny new XC90

Cee-Jay-Cee

Ubbquittious wrote: »

I have no intention of changing car but I'm just wondering how much of a pummeling these yokes can take? If you are bouncing a car with a haldex box through a mucky field on a daily basis will you be soon be faced with an error message on the screen saying "Replace haldex unit"?

At which point of course you have no choice but to spend thousands or do without because mere mortals havn't a hope of even beginning to comprehend the complex clusterf..k of gears, springs, actuators and little clutch discs inside in one of these.

I always got the impression their sole purpose was to make sure mommy would be able to drop the kids to school after parking a bit too close to the snowy edge of the road at which point the ECU decides to send a couple of ponies to the rear wheels for a few precious milliseconds till she's on her way in her shiny new XC90

If your pummelling the car along a muddy field on a daily basis then you deserve to get a message telling you that you have bucked the AWD system and in order to fix it you have to spend thousands. They're an AWD system primarily designed for road use, if you need something to use in the fields then buy a Land Rover or something designed for predominant off road use.

tossy

It's a very capable 4wd system primarily designed for road use in cars, it has a leaning more towards grip and performance rather than off roading or hauling through muck.

I'm on my 3rd haldex car and find it a very capable set up, you will hear a lot of myths about it primarily being FWD i've always found this to be nonsense - i've never been able to catch it out and it is indeed in 4WD pretty much all of the time. Every haldex car i've had has worn it's rear tyres quicker than it's fronts. It's a great set up for getting a 4wd set up into a small car like an S3 or TT or S1 etc.

I've had 2 torsen based cars also (full time mechanical 4wd) and in terms of the characteristics of he individual set ups they are indistinguishable.

vintagevrs

tossy wrote: »

It's a very capable 4wd system primarily designed for road use in cars, it has a leaning more towards grip and performance rather than off roading or hauling through muck.

I'm on my 3rd haldex car and find it a very capable set up, you will hear a lot of myths about it primarily being FWD i've always found this to be nonsense - i've never been able to catch it out and it is indeed in 4WD pretty much all of the time. Every haldex car i've had has worn it's rear tyres quicker than it's fronts. It's a great set up for getting a 4wd set up into a small car like an S3 or TT or S1 etc.

I've had 2 torsen based cars also (full time mechanical 4wd) and in terms of the characteristics of he individual set ups they are indistinguishable.

I'm surprised your rears wear faster. Wouldn't have thought it possible with the fronts doing the steering, having more weight on them and the rears never getting more that just 50% of the torque. For the time I had a haldex car I found it behaved very much like a fwd car, just with tonnes of grip when on the power.