Monday, February 1, 2010

So Long, A-TRAC, and thanks for all the fish. Wait, what?

I have come to the conclusion that technology’s solutions to problems typically fail in comparison to an actual solution to the problem. I rail against things most of the time, yes I admit it. Hey look, going on and on and on about how pretty the flowers are and how lovely the bacon was this morning doesn’t make them any better or worse, and f*ck, it’s boring OK? I complain. That’s what blogs are for. It’s an acronym that stands for Boy i Like cOmplaining, Golly! Really. Look it up.
So what are we railing against today? Active Traction Control. Toyota instituted it in their newer Tacoma models, and they tout it in videos and stuff as the next best thing to sliced cheese. It’s better than anything else ever. It makes an off-road vehicle much much better than all these silly simpler, less technical solutions ever could, like a locker or good tires or something. But it’s not the truth, it’s marketing. It’s $100 worth of technical cost that they can tell you is too complicated for you to understand anyway, but trust us it totally jacks up the price $2,500 and it’s worth it. As if.
What they don’t tell you is the truth: while it’s better than nothing, it’s worse than an actual solution. It stinks. It’s twice the cost and half the effectiveness of the simpler, less technical solutions.
I had the time to try it out in all it’s glory last weekend. I’ve had it engage before from time to time off-roading, but never had I felt that I was in a situation that required it. But no sooner than I find myself in that situation, it fails. Coincidence? We had gone up to the mountains to play in the snow, and doggone it, if there wasn’t snow. White, wet, icy, traction-challenged snow. Lots of it. Of course 4-wheel drive became a must, hell they had signs posted “chains required, NO EXCEPTIONS” even, but I’m lazy and a figured I have decent tires, and a well-equipped Toyota 4x4; it has ATRAC after all!
We made it to our destination without any fuss. No problems to report. But again, I wasn’t relying on the traction control anyway, I was relying on good tires & prudent, awesome driving skills (“mad skillz,” as the kids say). We eventually landed at a makeshift parking lot filled with people who recognized that continuing along a road with 4’ of snow over it was probably not going to happen, and everyone was skiing, sledding, hiking, and had at least 1.5 dogs with them (we brought 3). It was fun.
As we were getting ready to leave, we saw some big, lifted, new Chevy’s try to arrive. I want to emphasize try here, OK? All the trucks that had arrived at this spot were either a) older models with good tires, b) small trucks, c) AWD cars, d) Toyotas, or e) some logical combination of the above. What we saw out of this big poser truck was some crazy slippage that was not under control. And I chided to The Girl, so much for spending $40K on the truck & $10K on the lift and tires, there’s no fix for quality components & lighter weight.” As we exited down the road a bit later, a turn or two away just in case so we wouldn’t embarrass ourselves, I hit the gas hard to see if even trying, I could get slippage like that poser Chevy was having trouble with.
Eventually, we came to rest against a snowbank.
It’s not quite like it sounds. We actually didn’t get the truck to slip the tires and lose control with the gas, it was just that since it didn’t slip, we gained all that energy as forward motion and momentum, which sort of f*cked us coming downhill into that turn we were headed to.
So the thing was, 2-½ wheels were firmly planted on the pavement at first. I locked the rear and managed to get THREE whole wheels on the pavement; all but the passenger front were on solid ground. That passenger front though, was on the shoulder, slightly lower and snow-covered. And ATRAC failed me.
It’s supposed to brake the wheel that’s spinning and divert torque to the other side, so in my case it would brake the passenger front so that the driver front would turn — the one that was on the pavement — and pull me out. However, it uses the ABS system to function and relies on braking power to perform. So, when the brakes get hot, the whole system stops functioning at all. I was stuck like this, with three tires having as firm a grip on snow-covered pavement as they could, and the wheel that would get me out of the mess, my driver front, wouldn’t turn because ATRAC wouldn’t let it. Because it was an overly-technical solution to a simple problem: how do you get the tires with grip to turn?
The simple answer is that you lock the differential, so that no matter what, when you hit the gas, both wheels turn at the same speed. It’s simple, but here’s the thing: it’s f*cking failproof. It works. It doesn’t need all this technical mumbo-jumbo, it doesn’t have a million links in its system that could cause failure, the differential simply turns both because it mechanically has to.
The complicated answer, is you apply a computer that has no eyes or ears to be in charge of determining when what tire should be turning or being braked, in order to do what YOU want it to do, regardless that you have no way to communicate with it what your needs & intentions are. This computer will rely on sensors to tell it which tire is spinning and then brake the wheel for a set amount of time to get the other wheel spinning. It of course will have to let go because you can’t go forward too far with a non-turning wheel, and it has to let it go so it can again gauge to see if the wheel is indeed still slipping or not, which if it is, then oh well, you just lost traction again for a second while it tried to figure that out.
What it amounts to is the computer generational equivalent of a Rube Goldberg contraption: a big, convoluted, messy, jumbled, confusing, failure-inducing contraption that solves in 20 forehead-slapping steps what a simple stick could do in one. And I’m through with it.
Simple is better. A locker is better. Good tires are better. I’m through with the hype. I’m going to find me a 1st generation Tacoma, and make it simple and great. Hold me to that.