Is the Range Rover Sport the apex in arsehole wheels ?

[DownwardDog]

One of the big issues they have - and it's a hold over from the 'light truck' designs like L200, Navara, Hilux etc... is that there's not enough weight in the back when its not carrying pallet loads of bricks, so the rear wheels aren't pressed down onto the road and there's not enough friction between the tyres and the road surface.

The AWD cars don't have the same problem because the weight is more evenly spaced, but a bag of grit in the boot is a good plan.

It's not down to weight distribution, which is about 55:45 in most 1t pick ups. The traction problem is down to relatively crude rear suspension design (almost all leaf springs) with no pre-load adjustment. They have to run very high spring rate/natural frequency in the rear to be handle a full load in the bed which can be > 1,000kg. It's this that gives poor traction when it's unloaded. When you throw shit in the bed, you're improving traction by pre-loading the rear springs, NOT by changing the F-R weight distribution I have uncoupled the bottom leaf on the spring packs of my Triton for this very reason. The bottom leaf is now just a spacer and doesn't provide any compressive resistance.

Also, live axles means one rear wheel has to camber out if the other cambers in which isn't optimum for traction, but way less significant than the aforementioned spring rate issue.

 

[DownwardDog]

This thread is full of Temu Tommi Makinens.