Firstly I admit to being a complete beginner when it comes to driving off-road. Now I will admit to total embarrassment.
I drove down through the field next to our barn in cornwall today to check out our water pump (we have a pump house near a natural spring which pumps water to the house. It was very muddy and I have the standard all-terrain tyres fitted.
I drove with the diff lock engaged and got - stuck. My neighbour who has an ancient nissan pickup (with similar tyres & 4wd) almost managed to pull me free, until he got stuck too. Finally a mate with a tractor pulled us both out!

Point is, the Nissan seemed to cope better than me because he was able to "wheelspin" and make progress where I just groaned with ABS. I had put it in low range. Would I have done better to have kept it in high range?

It all got well muddy and we nearly pissed ourselves laughing, mainly at our own ineptitude. Wish i had taken photos.
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Thoroughly enjoying my landrovers in the far west.

Sounds like a great laugh! sometimes its jsut like that, though sometime momentum does help. Maybe he was jsut a little lighter than you. Anyway looks like you had fun.


Boy

often people go into low box mode for off road.

I would be surprise if you defender should have got stuck there, although many scenarios could have played thier part.

AT's for example, may have needed to spin clear as they have reached their capacity.

All that said remember you have HIGH and LOW and 6 speeds for each one ( + reverse)
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Mike
2.4TDCi 90CWS XS
300TDi Discovery

you may have just needed to give it a bit more beans, especially if you've got traction control, but there is always the optimum speed that you need to be in, i try to be a few mph quicker than the car is moving, this way the tread clears and you shouldn't lose too much traction, think of it like your walking on ice, you don't run straight away, but you could run if you spent some time building up momentum.
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it'll get up there

High-range 2nd seems to work best for me pulling away in mud/snow - not sure what equivalent low-range that would be - 4th... 5th?
The walking-on-ice is a good analogy - I always start off super-gentle (same goes for 2wd cars), 2nd gear, low revs, use the clutch to reduce torque. As soon as a wheel spins, dip the clutch and try again (before it digs a hole), and use the rocking motion to help.
If this fails, try spinning to clear treads, and generally thrashing around to cover everyone in mud before going for the tractor!

In the knarliest of mud, there's no substitute for mud-specific tyres, but tyre width and vehicle weight (as The Boy says) also come into it - skinny-but-tall-tyred 2CVs, Fiat Pandas, Austin 7s etc all do surprisingly well in mud & snow.

Also, if you're in high-range, if you get going you can then get into 3rd to keep some momentum up, the low-range ratios might be a bit too low/slow for this.

But I've never had TC, and don't know if this calls for different techniques?
Be interesting to know what parameters are set by the 'Terrain Response' on the D3 for mud?

more acceleration once you are spinning wheels with a TC equipped vehicle may help the vehicle extract itself which is the opposite to a non TC equipped vehicle. there is thread on here somewhere with the definitive on how TC works.

TR on D3 for Mud and Ruts gives a slower power response than std (although quicker than GGS) gives the locking diff a fair proportion of preload and set the suspension to expect big changes (more the ruts setting part of it than the mud!) ie sets the cross link valves to respond quicker. it also limits DSC a bit plus alters HDC speeds.
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Cheers

James

Did you boot it to make the traction control work

I stuck my nose in a mud hole and tried to reverse and all 4 tyres just spun and no movement.
All 4 tyres were rotating at the same speed so TC was fooled into thinking the Fender was actually moving.
Had to get towed by a TD5. Better than a Tchota.

Click image to enlarge

CapeLandy wrote:

I stuck my nose in a mud hole and tried to reverse and all 4 tyres just spun and no movement.
All 4 tyres were rotating at the same speed so TC was fooled into thinking the Fender was actually moving.
Had to get towed by a TD5. Better than a Tchota.

i would have said low was correct for gear range, but prob 3rd or 4th (4th is almost 2nd anyway)
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Cheers

James