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Slipping wheel in snow

3K views 6 replies 5 participants last post by  dragosh10 
#1 ·
HI
Subaru Forester non turbo:icon_eek::
The front nearside wheel lost traction in the snow last week and was just spinning when power was applied, the other 3 wheels did not do anything to assist in moving the car there appeared to be no drive power at the wheels
got sorted by digging down to the road surface where only talking about 10 cms of compacted snow which was squashed into into ice:icon_redface:

Any ideas is this normal with AWD on a Subaru:confused:
 
#3 ·
RE feathering the brakes
Its a manual gearbox so I change into low ratio and no matter how gentle i was on the throttle it still slipped and there was no traction from the other wheels, so the whole situation left me a bit puzzled as to why this should happen as i thought there was a kind of limited slip diff in the design of the transmission, I have owned 2 land rovers over the years of motoring and you could lock the diff manually( lever by the gear lever ) and away you went if you where in this situation as the power was at the 4 wheels no matter what each wheel was doing you had drive power at each one. But that's a fully lockable diff.

Anyway car drives fine apart from this Its not a complaint more a question of interest.
 
#4 ·
In that situation you should at least had power on one of the rear wheels.Foresters have front and rear open diffs, but the central one is LSD wich in theory keeps power 50/50 front/rear.In low grip situations power should go to minimum 2 wheels>1 in front 1 in the rear.
From my point of view, and i'm no expert, you have a problem at the center diff.
 
#6 ·
A good way to see if your LSD is bad is to get the car on the lift and rotate the tires. The tire should spin free and the other tires should spin the other direction.

This is not always the case with the EAT transmission as they're electronically controlled, since it is a MT it should be reverse with opposite rotation on the tires. Keep in mind that the LSD will dis-engage if the tires are fully turned left or right. It should be 35% turn from either direction the LSD will be engaged at. If you can lift the car up make sure the tires are straight and see what happens.
 
#7 ·
Might not work!If the LSD is not all the way "worn out" it could do what its suposed to do with the wheels in the air!Not allot of friction and weight on them and the LSD still might turn them.
He should try to have a wheel in the front and one in the rear on ice or a very slippery surface and the other 2 wheels on a surface with lots of grip!
If he gets the same result as in his first post i blame the central diff!!!
 
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