Going off-road doesn’t always mean that you need to hit the aftermarket to make your ride more capable. There’s a good chance it already came from the factory offering features that will be useful where the pavement ends.
Downhill Assist Control/Hill Descent Control
These systems are offered on many trucks, SUVs, and crossovers. The basic concept here is that vehicle can manipulate the accelerator or brakes in order to prevent a vehicle from descending a hill too quickly or sliding on the way down, should the surface be loose. There are also hill-start control systems to prevent vehicles – particularly those with manual transmissions – from sliding backwards before ascending a hill.
Terrain Management Systems
Found on everything from Fords to Land Rovers, terrain management systems are used to adjust engine, throttle, brake, stability control, and transmission settings to best match a vehicle to the surface it’s driving on. Most of these systems will have settings for snow, sand, gravel, dirt/mud, and pavement. For example, a sand setting might hold the transmission in as low a gear as possible to keep the vehicle from bogging down as the wheels slide through a loose surface, while a snow setting might result in upshifts at lower engine speeds – upshifts that will be more gentle to avoid wheelspin caused by a sudden jolt of torque.
Locking Differentials
One of the oldest and most basic off-road components is a locking differential, and vehicles like the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon come standard so equipped. Other models, like third-generation Toyota 4Runners, will offer rear lockers as optional equipment. For those that don’t know, a locking differential can “lock” to force both sides of the same axle to rotate at the same speed, thus helping improve overall traction in situations where traction varies greatly between two wheels. In some cases, the differential is centrally located along the transfer case, but the concept is the same.
4-Lo
Low-range for four-wheel drive isn’t as prevalent a factory feature as it once was, particularly among vehicles that have all-wheel-drive systems as opposed to four-wheel drive. 4 Lo is basically a low range for the transfer case that enables a vehicle to crawl along the trail – and it’s something that will be found on any hard-core trail-ready vehicle. Much like a mountain biker would go into a lower gear for climbing hills, 4 Lo serves the same function for trucks and SUVs that reduces wheel speed and allows the vehicle to crawl up or down a slope. 4 Lo is often considered a setting for uphill climbs only, but in reality is can be just as useful to carefully navigate a steep downhill section as well.
Adjustable Suspension
Some vehicles, like the Ram Rebel on the truck side or the Toyota Land Cruiser on the SUV side, offer air suspension systems that allow the driver to change the vehicle’s ride height from inside the cockpit, thus adding ground clearance if needed. The Rebel, for example, can be lowered for easier entry and exit and even has an aerodynamic setting (called Aero Mode) to provide better on-road fuel economy. The system can also be raised to provide additional ground clearance for the trail.
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