Thread: Puma Traction Control

Learn to drive without the extra aids first..
It will hone your skills at picking a line.

I had a toy with all the fruit, replaced it with a Defender 110 with a bit of lift, some nice shocks etc... and worked on honing skills at picking the right line.

Never bothered fitting a locker since...

Originally Posted by Explorer30

Hi all,

This weekend I attended a 4WD course in Perth through Eureka 4WD. Was a brilliant day and can highly recommend if you know you have a lot to learn like me.

Through one of the obstacles I noticed that the traction control on my 2007 110 was not working as expected. It was a slightly muddy axle twister, and after completing successfully I went back through and chose the worst line possible to test the traction control.

Car was in 1 Low, CDL engaged (light on). I entered the obstacle with a small amount of accelerator until traction was lost on one front and one rear wheel. I then held on the gas consistently at around 3000rpm. I could feel and hear the traction control trying to engage, though braking was not sufficient to stop the wheels with no traction, thus power was never directed to the remaining wheels. I attempted again, revved consistently for some time, at no point was the TC able to divert power.

The instructor made a comment that the system seemed to be 'trying' but would not fully engage - an easy fix, front and rear diff locks! Another (post 2011) defender was there on the day and made it through fine.

Tonight I will jack up one wheel and double check that the CDL is engaging correctly, though I doubt this is the problem, as I would have noticed on other obstacles.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Is the pre 2011 TC system not as effective as the newer model? Is there a sure fire way to test if the TC system is working properly?

Thanks!

Matt

The later ones were definitely different,i remember Gordon from GOE mentioning this.The change was around 2010/11.
Cant remember what the upgrade was,but it was definitely to do with the way the Traction control operated.

Someone may hopefully chime in with more info.

I’ve had the opposite problem. On a wet, muddy, grassy hill towing a trailer. All wheels were slipping and traction control was working so hard on all wheels that the brakes were actually impeding my progress! Clackety clackety clack!! They were all virtually locking up and the pedal went hard for a moment to! Not pleasant on a hip. In the end I needed a tow out.

ATBs or locking rear was what I needed. ...saving, saving!

Even with CDL locked Zeros? Cheers

Whilst in the UK we did the LR experience in a 110 at Solihull and I had some questions for the instructor re traction control on my 130 puma and how well it works and some techniques for getting the best out of it. We did a hill with rollers embedded in the road at opposing intervals so that it was possible to get no traction on diagonal axles. The instructor asked me to go up in first gear on the anti stall to get an idea of what would happen when I lost traction on two wheels and the 110 failed to proceed. He then got me to have another go in second with some more throttle. At that pace a combination of momentum and the traction control which you could certainly hear working got us over the rollers with no issue.
As stated above this is the same technique you would use for a vehicle without TC and you would probably get through as well although more momentum might be required.
The Defender Traction control isn't as good as new Land Rovers like the Disco 3 onwards where it is almost as capable as having diff locks.

Regards,
Tote

I know on the d2 I have had cross it up with 2 wheels in the air and in first low st idle it will just sit and grab in a lethargic way and stay there spinning and not stalling. As soon as the throttle is applied the wheels without any grip spin more the traction control then becomes much more aggressive, drive is transferred and it walks through. I recall the service manager at Blue Ribbon in the early 2000's saying that they had run the early D2 and Deefer Extreme a lot together and confirmed what the UK told them that the D2 ran a different program to account for lack of CDL and was much more aggressive (read useful...). Cheers

Thanks for all the input everyone - I love this forum.

Sounds like higher gearing and a bit of momentum is the way to go to get the most out of the relatively basic TC in a defender.

Picking a better line and/or rear lockers of course preferable.

Cheers

Explorer30 another important thing is to use constant throttle input - bring revs up and hold them (say 2000rpm and play with it from there)...any decrease in throttle input even for a split second will stop the traction control doing its thing and it will take a second to recalibrate when you either then hold at lower revs or increase revs and thus you will lose momentum. It's a very good thing when you select revs and hold them..
Cheers m8