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My wife currently drives a AWD Honda CRV, but it's getting pretty crowded with 2 carseats in the back. So it's time to get my wife a larger vehicle and we're expecting to get a minivan, or possibly a Ford Flex. Between our house and the nearest pavement is about 100 yards of "road" that is not paved, plowed, or even crowned for draining. Any type of precipitation turns the road into a creek, with potholes & streams ~ 8" deep. Both this winter and last, there was about 1 week where I was unable to come and go without using 4wd.

I've been thinking for some time that a 2WD 4cyl Sienna would be perfect for us. The smaller engine would be cheaper, get better FE, warm up quicker, and be a bit easier to maintain.

But the worse my road gets, the more I'm second guessing the 2WD.

Here's how I see the pro's and con's:

AWD good:
Peace of mind that she'll always have the freedom to come and go when I'm at work, and that she'd never have to wait with 2 little girls for me to come pull them out of the snow & muck.
She really doesn't rack up a lot of miles. Maybe 5-8k a year.

AWD bad:
more $
more fuel
more stuff to maintain
For the Sienna, you lose a spare tire
Do I want my wife driving if the snow is that bad?

Do you own the road? If not, can you lobby for maintenance and gravel?

Do you figure to remain at this home for a few years or more?

If those thoughts leave you needing 4WD, then go for it. You've been around here long enough that I trust you need your truck. That means what you buy her will be the high FE car. Odyssey or Flex seem like sound choices. Just remember to trade down when the kids are older or you move closer to pavement.

There. I put my foot down.

Good luck.

Rent a tractor and grade the road. Then you can buy whatever you want. Don't get the AWD it's not what you want anyway. :D - Dale

Do you already have winter tires? They make a HUGE difference. And once it gets moving, a 2WD vehicle with good winter tires is MUCH safer and more controllable overall than a 4WD with all seasons.

Remember, AWD helps you go, but it doesn't help you stop. Tires are the only thing that touch the ground (hopefully!)

The problem isn't the car, it's the road. AWD won't do anything about 8" deep puddles and streams unless you have the ground clearance to handle it. Grade the road and get a 2WD car with snow tires.

As for the road, one thing to do is to dump a mixture of gravel and stone dust ("perk pack") that provides a good driving surface and drains well. Level it, roll it, and take care not to dig it up in the winter. Or just pave it, which would be a permanent low-maintenance fix.

I'd love nothing more than to rent a grader and fix our road, but:
1) We'd need many many truckloads or rock brought in.
2) I don't know what I'm doing.

Snow tires sound like just the ticket.

I can sympathize with the rock part (probably quite expensive). As for the grading I'm sure you would get the hang of it. If you had time on your hands you could just have the fill dumped in a pile and rent a big tractor with a front loader and a box grader. The box grader makes it simple by picking up material from the high spots and puting it back down on the low spots. You just set it to the height you want and drag it behind the tractor.

So the process is:
1) Dump a bucket of gravel approximately where you want it.
2) Drag the box over it
3) Dump another bucket of gravel where the first bucket ran out
4) Drag the box over that one.
5) Etc. etc.

Rolling it is nice but not strictly necessary. Driving the cars will pack it down in time. The only down-side of not rolling is that there is a risk of rutting if this road is a hill. At that point you try to talk your wife out of the new car and buy her a tractor instead. :D

If she doesn't rack up a lot of mileage, then the small penalty of AWD shouldn't make much of a difference.

The extra cost of AWD is normally recouped when it comes time to replace the vehicle.

I am a big believer in AWD AND winter tires.

Another thing, check around to find any local small operators who do road work. You might be reasonably pleased at their prices to fix it up a little.

I can sympathize with the rock part (probably quite expensive). As for the grading I'm sure you would get the hang of it. If you had time on your hands you could just have the fill dumped in a pile and rent a big tractor with a front loader and a box grader. The box grader makes it simple by picking up material from the high spots and puting it back down on the low spots. You just set it to the height you want and drag it behind the tractor.

So the process is:
1) Dump a bucket of gravel approximately where you want it.
2) Drag the box over it
3) Dump another bucket of gravel where the first bucket ran out
4) Drag the box over that one.
5) Etc. etc.

Rolling it is nice but not strictly necessary. Driving the cars will pack it down in time. The only down-side of not rolling is that there is a risk of rutting if this road is a hill. At that point you try to talk your wife out of the new car and buy her a tractor instead. :D

I'm guessing that this wouldn't be enough to solve the problem for long. It sounds like the root cause of the rough road is a drainage problem. Probably ditch construction and maybe culvert installation and grade raising would be needed to build a decent road. You'd have to look at the spot to know for sure.

Meanwhile, it would be a good idea to grade off the high spots now and then, probably a better idea than getting AWD.

My experience with drivers with 4WD/AWD is that they get stuck about as often as 2WD drivers, it's just in deeper snow drifts/mudholes.

I agree with most posts here, I am new here but I do know that getting a 2wd with snow tires will benefit you more in the long run.

On 5-8k miles a year theres will not be a significant difference in fuel cost. Peace of mind when it comes to the wife and little ones is worth more than the cash anyhow.

I'd have suggested renting a vehicle during the worst of it and seeing how it would work, but I think IL is pretty well out of winter this year.

I have felt much safer in the highlander FWD than the sporttrack 4WD. That's without dedicated snow tires. On the other hand, I have hills the highlander just won't climb in ice snow because the Toyota would sometimes rather not slip than move forward.

One thing to consider- AWD is not 4WD. It's designed for snow and slippery roads, not slogging through mud. I know the CRV held up but still...AWD systems break when people try to off-road with them.

On my 450 ft road, I had breaker run put in (junk stone that doesn't get crushed small enough), then several years later I bought the asphalt that was shaved off the county road.

Given the premium you'd pay for AWD, you could probably get a decent road put in. And not have to explain to the in-laws that it's too wet to drive their Buick over (unless that is also part of the plan:D)

Keith

One thing to consider- AWD is not 4WD.Guess I've been around long enough to remember when no such distinction was made, and I consider the distinction between between "AWD" and "4WD" to be one cooked up in marketing departments only in very recent years. Not even 1% of people who own "AWD" vehicles ever consider taking them offroad so the ruggedness distinction is moot anyway. Most people who go for 4WD/AWD buy them for traction, not beefiness, and I don't get the impression that this thread is about a requirement for serious offroading capability.

My 1990 Subaru Legacy said "4WD" on it -- NOT "AWD" as Subaru started doing in 1992 shortly before deciding to make themselves the "AWD people" and dropped the 2wd vehicles from their lineup. But despite the more rugged-sounding "4WD" moniker, I'd say my '90 Legacy's drive system was significantly less robust than that of the "AWD" 2000 and 1996 Outbacks that I also owned.

Likewise, my 1987 Honda Civic Wagon had fundamentally the same full-time drive system as the "Real Time AWD" found on CR-Vs since the late 1990s (1985 and '86 Civic 4WD wagons had a part-time system). But the graphics on the side of the car said "REAL TIME 4WD". (In fairness, maybe the "4WD" label was appropriate in today's context, because that was by far the most rugged vehicle I've ever owned. I beat the hell out of that thing on every terrain imaginable, including places where I saw Jeep Cherokee owners turn around out of fear, and it kept begging for more).

I'm not sure the term "all wheel drive" had even been coined by 1987 when my 4WD Civic Wagon was built, yet during that era there were tons of "4wd" cars on offer -- 4wd versions of the Tercel wagon, Corolla wagon, Nissan Sentra wagon, Stanza wagon, Nissan Axxess, Dodge Colt Vista, Toyota minivan, Chrysler minivans, Mazda 323 hatch (briefly), Mitsubishi Galant, Eclipse/Talon and of course every Subaru from the XT and Justy to the bread-and-butter range eventually to be known as Loyale. All of these vehicles were labeled "4WD", not AWD. Most were wildly popular in my part of the country, and at no time do I ever remember hearing anyone referring to these vehicles as "all wheel drive", even though none of them were beefy enough for serious offroading.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX_aeSmLdx0&NR=1

The Geo Metro version of 4WD. Stock. - Dale

Guess I've been around long enough to remember when no such distinction was made, and I consider the distinction between between "AWD" and "4WD" to be one cooked up in marketing departments only in very recent years. Not even 1% of people who own "AWD" vehicles ever consider taking them offroad so the ruggedness distinction is moot anyway. Most people who go for 4WD/AWD buy them for traction, not beefiness, and I don't get the impression that this thread is about a requirement for serious offroading capability.

Between our house and the nearest pavement is about 100 yards of "road" that is not paved, plowed, or even crowned for draining. Any type of precipitation turns the road into a creek, with potholes & streams ~ 8" deep. Both this winter and last, there was about 1 week where I was unable to come and go without using 4wd.

Sounds like a possibility of mud to me.

Regarding the difference: my dad's shop in AZ saw a good amount of AWD cars/vans with broken drivelines because people didn't understand the difference. Maybe VW might have been first to differentiate?- with their Viscous Coupling System. I think manufacturers backed away from using the term "4wd" for limited slip type systems because they aren't as robust as the mechanical- transfer case systems. Mud and deep sand (w/o flotation type tires) are hard on AWD systems. I have no idea what type of system Toyota uses, but their use of the term AWD could be an indication that they don't intend off-roading, deep mud driving with it.

Keith

Keith

We definitely get some mud with spring rains and snow melt, but so far I'm not aware of anyone getting stuck in the mud with 2wd.

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/500/medium/road.jpg

There's still hope for my road yet. The neighbors are chipping in to get more rock brought in to at least fill in some of the holes. Somebody is even looking into ways to get the township to take over maintainence. :)

If that's the kind of terrain you have to deal with you don't need awd. That looks like a standard sand/gravel road, so you'll always find a firm base a no real slippery mud (where the soil contains a high percentage of wet silt and clay). Plus it doesn't look like there's much of a grade there. I've driven through a lot worse with all my fwd cars without problems, just pick your line and drive slow.

Wow that is a really horrible road to drive on O_O

Looking at your picture- I vote 2wd with snow tires. Is that a curb on the right??

I was imagining slick, heavy clay mud.
Keith

Guess I've been around long enough to remember when no such distinction was made, and I consider the distinction between between "AWD" and "4WD" to be one cooked up in marketing departments only in very recent years. Not even 1% of people who own "AWD" vehicles ever consider taking them offroad so the ruggedness distinction is moot anyway. Most people who go for 4WD/AWD buy them for traction, not beefiness, and I don't get the impression that this thread is about a requirement for serious offroading capability.

My 1990 Subaru Legacy said "4WD" on it -- NOT "AWD" as Subaru started doing in 1992 shortly before deciding to make themselves the "AWD people" and dropped the 2wd vehicles from their lineup. But despite the more rugged-sounding "4WD" moniker, I'd say my '90 Legacy's drive system was significantly less robust than that of the "AWD" 2000 and 1996 Outbacks that I also owned.

Likewise, my 1987 Honda Civic Wagon had fundamentally the same full-time drive system as the "Real Time AWD" found on CR-Vs since the late 1990s (1985 and '86 Civic 4WD wagons had a part-time system). But the graphics on the side of the car said "REAL TIME 4WD". (In fairness, maybe the "4WD" label was appropriate in today's context, because that was by far the most rugged vehicle I've ever owned. I beat the hell out of that thing on every terrain imaginable, including places where I saw Jeep Cherokee owners turn around out of fear, and it kept begging for more).

I'm not sure the term "all wheel drive" had even been coined by 1987 when my 4WD Civic Wagon was built, yet during that era there were tons of "4wd" cars on offer -- 4wd versions of the Tercel wagon, Corolla wagon, Nissan Sentra wagon, Stanza wagon, Nissan Axxess, Dodge Colt Vista, Toyota minivan, Chrysler minivans, Mazda 323 hatch (briefly), Mitsubishi Galant, Eclipse/Talon and of course every Subaru from the XT and Justy to the bread-and-butter range eventually to be known as Loyale. All of these vehicles were labeled "4WD", not AWD. Most were wildly popular in my part of the country, and at no time do I ever remember hearing anyone referring to these vehicles as "all wheel drive", even though none of them were beefy enough for serious offroading.

The terms AWD and 4WD HAVE been kind of used interchangeably over the years. Currently, the common references are as follows

4WD generally designates a switchable part time system that has a transfer case. It may or may not have a center diff. It may or may not have a low range in it's transfer case.The majority of these are RWD, switchable to 4WD. Some 4WD vehicles are full time4WD (some grand cherokees come to mind), but they still use a transfer case with a low range built into it. These system use a viscous coupling to act as a center diff.

AWD generally designates a vehicle that is full time 4WD, with some type of center diff arrangement. They generally do not have a true transfer case, and almost all cannot be switched off(there are always a few exceptions).
The term AWD usually applies to cars or crossovers, and 4WD is SUV's and trucks.
AWD systems are not generally designed for serious off roading, like a Jeep Wranglers 4WD system is. They can be quite capable(like most Subarus for example), but their primary mission is poor weather traction on paved or unpaved roads, not rock crawling.
Dave

You definitely don't need AWD for that road. I drive 40 miles on a muddy/snowy road worse than that in Idaho last weekend, in my low-clearance 2WD Jetta (with snow tires).

My wife and I used to travel a road that looked that bad, but only 10 feet wide, along the trail out to Boulder Field near Hazleton PA - in a Dodge Caravan with cheapie tires. The worst part of the ride was sinking in the mud enough to cause the mini-boulders in the middle to scrape the subframe. The alternative for us was to move a little to the side to get out of the ruts and risk a tree branch catching the side mirror. We always made it, and without much drama. That being said, roads are sometimes worse than they look, and while the photo suggests good tires and six inches or more of ground clearance are all that's needed, only those who have driven it can know for sure.

AWD will transfer power from "the wheels that slip to the wheels that grip", but it's the tires that put the power to the ground. I never needed AWD even in the ice storms and meter-deep snow of the Poconos. A set of winter tires and FWD with traction control have always done the job, even to the point of my wife driving up an icy incline, snaking in between the 4x4s with all four of their "all-season" tires spinning. When the temps go above 40F, the tread compound of winter tires is not as important, but the deeper tread lugs do a good job of chewing through mud and snow. That's why I leave the snow tires on my PA-driven cars until late April - so the Spring thaw and mud pits can be tackled with the aggressive tread.

WOW! That road picture looks something like my road on a good day!

Mine is about 4 blocks long, till I get to some blacktop, and in a rain storm there may be puddles (small lakes) that are 18"+ in depth.

It was a lot worse 22 years ago when I first moved in here and I was driving an '87 Dodge Caravan.
That Caravan was like a tank and never got stuck!

Then, still with the Caravan, I began dragging a homemade road-drag up and down the road to smooth out the high spots and fill in the low spots. I made it out of pieces and parts that I found laying along the road and in construction dumpsters.

After being broken and repaired more times than I can count in 22 years, this old drag
is starting to really show its age. The leading edge is a 4" steel beam, that takes most
of the punishment. The wooden 4x4's are just for leveling.
As you can see in this picture, my road is almost all Pure White Sand.
It takes a lot of maintenance to keep it drivable.

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g90/DrWho1943/RoadGrader.jpg

Yup! That's my little Suzuki SX4, iAWD that I'm now using to pull the road-drag.
On the SX4, AWD becomes 4WD with just a press of a button on the center console.
No more levers to shift when going into 4WD, like with my 2000 Suzuki Grand Vitara,
which also pulled the drag for six years.
My little SX4 actually gets better traction with the computer controlled AWD, than my GV did with dedicated 4WD.

AWD is great for driving in areas where you're not sure what you'll be experiencing next, like a paved road, during a rain storm, where you may encounter puddles that can toss a 2WD car around a bit. Or any road in a snow storm.:eyebrow:

I have neither a wife or children, but if I did, I'd feel much better about sending them off in the family car, in bad weather, if it had AWD.

Just getting home, for me, is technically "Off Roading".
My road is actually very nice now, after 22 years of maintenance,
but the side roads and even a few of the main ones out here, in the country, are pure crap.
I was glad to get rid of my 2006 Suzuki Forenza, FWD and get back into something that has some 'traction' control.
The Forenza would also pull the road-drag, but only if I dropped the front tire pressure to about 20#.

I'm not familiar with any other brand of car and their AWD technologies, but the AWD/4WD system on the Suzuki SX4 is GREAT! I even removed the AWD sticker from the hatch on my SX4 and replaced it with a new sticker that says, " 4X4 ".
That better describes the way I use my SX4.:rolleyes::D:D

Granted, with 4 wheels pulling, your gas mileage will sort of go to H#$$.
Out on dry pavement, I drive in 2WD and am concerned with getting as good of MPG as possible, hence my joining this forum. ;)

My best run so far was my trip to Daytona Beach for Bike Week.
It's all two lane road from here to there, at 55mph, and I got a whopping 29.5 mpg.
That's my all time best. I'm hoping to find information here that will help me
to increase that.

Thanks guys, for a great forum!

The Doctor :cool:

Doctor,
I've got family in the Ocala area and that looks like their kinda turf. - Dale

Doctor, welcome to cleanmpg. There was a thread on the SX4 forums form a member asking how to improve his mileage, so i issued an invite for anyone who was interested to come and check out cleanmpg. I am pleased that some have chosen to visit here, and hopefully more will join like the doctor and contribute to the forums.

Doctor,
I've got family in the Ocala area and that looks like their kinda turf. - Dale

Yup, thas my neighborhood alright! Just a few miles SW.

Unfortunately, there are even Ocala city streets that are worse off than my country road.
You need a 4x4 just to get around.

I'm actually quite proud of the improvements I've been able to make here in the past 22 years. I've managed to turn a very bad one lane road into a very passable two lane road.
But, it will go to heck in a hurry if I don't keep up with the maintenance.

At the cost of my MPG, I might add. I get a whopping 5 mpg while pulling my road drag in four wheel LOCK and Second Gear. There isn't a lot I can do about that, but when I'm out on the open road, I'd like to do as well as possible.

:cool:

Doctor, welcome to cleanmpg. There was a thread on the SX4 forums form a member asking how to improve his mileage, so i issued an invite for anyone who was interested to come and check out cleanmpg. I am pleased that some have chosen to visit here, and hopefully more will join like the doctor and contribute to the forums.

Yup! That's where I got this URL. Thanks for the link.
I'm using my "Other" screen-name, or I'm sure you'd recognize me at a glance.:woot:

I'm not a fanatic about MPG's, but with gas at it's current price, I DO want to save all I can.

While testing O2 sensors in the research labs at the Caterpillar Tractor Co. (some years ago now) we played around with modifying the output of the sensors to fool the ECC into running an engine a little more on the lean side, thus saving fuel.

We also found that impurities in fuel can cause the O2 sensors to drift out of spec. prematurely. I won't run an O2 sensor any more than 50k miles.
As they get old, they will cause an engine to run richer and richer, thus wasting fuel.
A black sooty deposit in the tail pipe is a good indicator of this condition.

Now I'm just rambling again. Sorry!

Thanks again for this link,

The Doctor :cool:

Unless the slope is deceptive or it doesn't have a hard bottom the road looks 2WD/snow tire passable to me.

It really might be worth having the township look at what improvements you'd need to make to get them to take it over. At the very least they'd give you some idea what improvements could be made. The photo definitely makes it look like the street grade is too low there. Maybe you could fix that with a shallow ditch and a small culvert under the driveway on the right side of the picture?

Yup! That's where I got this URL. Thanks for the link.
I'm using my "Other" screen-name, or I'm sure you'd recognize me at a glance.:woot:

I'm not a fanatic about MPG's, but with gas at it's current price, I DO want to save all I can.

While testing O2 sensors in the research labs at the Caterpillar Tractor Co. (some years ago now) we played around with modifying the output of the sensors to fool the ECC into running an engine a little more on the lean side, thus saving fuel.

We also found that impurities in fuel can cause the O2 sensors to drift out of spec. prematurely. I won't run an O2 sensor any more than 50k miles.
As they get old, they will cause an engine to run richer and richer, thus wasting fuel.
A black sooty deposit in the tail pipe is a good indicator of this condition.

Now I'm just rambling again. Sorry!

Thanks again for this link,

The Doctor :cool:

I know the screen name is different, but i instantly recognized the avatar!

Me, trying to hide in a forum is like an 800 pound Gorilla trying to hide on the Seniors party bus!:Banane35:

Well, last night I antied up and ordered the Scan Gauge w/ X-Gauge.
I think it's something I'll enjoy playing around with.
Do I need it? Probably not, but it should make a neat toy anyway.
And if it helps me figure this little SX4 out a bit, all the better.

I love my SX4 and it's as good as any car I've ever owned, for both comfort, easy to drive and great 'Off Road'ability. With the A/T, it's just not top eliminator in a MPG contest.

I hope to be able to find out how to get top MPG's when I'm out on the road.
I already know how to totally destroy my mileage..... I just spent the last hour pulling a heavy wooden road-drag up and down my road to smooth it out a bit. Most of the way, my mileage meter was reading about 5.x MPG.;)

Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?

The Doctor :cool:

So the garbage men are no longer willing to take their truck down our road. We have to haul the cans to the corner. The good news is that now the neighbors are pitching in to get more rock delivered. We've got 9 tandem loads coming next week :)

This won't fix anything long term, but it gives us a more usable road for a while.