Technical New panda 4x4 eld question

Currently reading:
Technical New panda 4x4 eld question

Stefanesai

New member
Joined
Aug 26, 2016
Messages
12
Points
4
Hi,

Picked up our brand new 4x4 ta about a month ago. First trip home was about 1400 km and now we have done about 3200 km total in the first month.

The little panda has done great so far, average consumption is about 6,2l/100 km doing local driving. On our drive home from the dealer we averaged 5,9 on the first tank, 5,3 on the second and 4,9 l/100 km on the final 200 kms. That was nice driving though.

Only foult was the docking for the tomtom blue&me. Somehow fiat had turned the docking 180 degrees around, so we had no power to the gps. But that's sorted.

However there is one thing... Have only slightly tried it off road, but I think the eld is VERY slow to respond if two wheels loose grip. From what I have read, and my understanding, this has the potential to work very fast. Just imagine how quickly the stability program steps in on normal driving. On our panda, if we set it up so that two wheels diagonally loose traction, it takes several seconds for the eld light to come on and braking of the spinning wheels starts. So long that all forward momentum is lost, and the spinning wheels start to smoke. So it works... But just so damn slow. Anyone else experiencing this? Our other car is a fully air locked land cruiser so I am not a newbie to off-roading. Also, this is not the pandas intended use, but the potential is so great if the system worked a little (or a lot) faster.

Technically, any difference in wheel speed should be detected in milliseconds and brakes applied fast.

Other than that, super happy. It's pretty loaded, good stereo, blue&me, auto climate control, ok seats, satnav and pretty much what you need. Got the rear windows tinted and it is that strange red metallic paint. We both like it :)

Cheers
Stefan from Norway
 
Here it is
 

Attachments

  • image.jpeg
    image.jpeg
    3.3 MB · Views: 66
Hi Stefan, excellent choice and colour. I am not sure how the 4x4 system works on these Pandas but I know there are guys on here that do, I can say I have done quite a bit of off road use with these cars and they have always performed really well. In the photo below I was starting to climb up a steep muddy slope which I actually started on 3 wheels, I had no run up but the Panda got up there no probs. I have not noticed a delay with the traction, so I hope you don't have a problem, it's probably just getting used to a new system and vehicle, good luck[emoji106]IMG_1475478948.734884.jpg
 
Something to note, the ELD responds differently in different situations. The reason is, the button itself doesn't necessarily "lock" the differentials, but it primes the solenoid valve in the rear diff for the viscous coupling to engage faster. This means that if any of the front wheels still have grip, the power is still prioritised to the front, but if both front wheels lose grip the torque is transferred to the rear much faster than with ELD off. For this reason, it doesn't cope as well as a true locking diff setup when diagonal grip loss is concerned.

Also, I have noticed that if the wheels without grip are spinning too fast, the system doesn't get involved too quickly but it does if they're only spinning slowly. The way I see it, when presented with a challenging bit of terrain, you can either try chugging along at low RPM in low gear and let the torque pull through, or you can attack it like a madman and let momentum do the work. My experience has been that both approaches work quite well.
 
A couple of days ago I took the 4x4 TA up a very steep half-mile ski slope in the Sibillini mountains (where the recent earthquake took place) - ripply ground with slippery grass cover in places and probably about 45 degrees. Had ELD on. The only issue occurred when I had to slow down to pick our way through some rough stony ground, when, even in the "crawler" first gear the TA was beginning to struggle at low revs.
 
All good and valid replies and a particularly good point made about the systems apparent 'reluctance' to deal with a wildly spinning wheel, so perhaps it does have some mechanical sympathy in its logic too.

ELD light on the dash will flash when it's doing its stuff - yellow if the ELD button is OFF (or Auto mode on Cross) and then green if ELD is ON. Have a look at the promo videos of the 4x4 at launch on the Balocco test track and you can see how slowly the drivers tackle the obstacles and how well the system works in those situations.

 
Eld button was on in my case. Green eld light came on when it was doing its thing, but took a lot of wheel spin initially until it came on and started braking the spinning wheels.
 
Back
Top