Bronco Base vs Bronco II in the snow first impressions

[Lil Red Broncette]

I finally got to take one of my Broncos out in the snow. I love to drive in the snow especially on roads when there are few other vehicles out there. So this is about on the road snow driving, not off-road snow driving.

Thru the years I've owned three Bronco IIs, a 88, then 90 and presently own a 87. Combined I have about 300K miles between these three so I am far more used to them than my new Broncos where I have a combined total less than 4K miles.

So here is the comparison:

2022 Bronco Base, 2DR with no options except automatic trans. So only basic part time 4WD system.

vs

1987 Bronco II, stock, manual trans, manual transfer case and manual locking hubs. Only real difference from factory equipment is larger height (not width) tires with a bit more aggressive tread.

All driving was in 4H. I push the limits and usually moving a bit fast for 4L.

Neither vehicle has lockers and neither has limited slip differential. At least I don't think the Bronco Base doesn't have, I know the Bronco II doesn't have.

The factory tires on the 22 Bronco has a pretty tame tread so it was at a disadvantage tire wise. The Bronco's P235 tires were still toller than the Bronco II's P215 tires, but with only a few inches of snow the height wasn't going to make a difference..

Overall, the Base was plenty competent. It climbed hills despite the tires as I would expect out of the Bronco II. It tracked well and I had fundamental control issues.

I did turn off the AdvanceTrac on the Base, but unfortunately this did not disable the antilock brakes. So I can't compare stopping fairly. The non-antilock brakes give me much better stopping and control in the snow. That said I will say the Base's antilock brakes seemed reasonable and were better than my 02 Explorer in similar circumstances.

The one performance item that took some getting used to was the turbo. Sometimes I would get into the gas hard enough to trigger boost and when that came on it would slip. Since it had an auto trans sometimes boost came on with a shift which made it more significant torque change. This wasn't a problem per se, I just had to adjust my habits to it.

All in all, performance wise, I was pretty happy. With so many miles in Bronco IIs of course I would be less in sync with the new vehicle.

One non-performance item really surprised me and I can't explain why. For some reason I found it far more difficult to see the road in the Bronco Base. Maybe it is the white-er light from the Base's headlights with the white snow didn't allow more contrast? As usual, with both vehicles low beams worked better in the snow. It just seemed the brightness of the falling snowflakes made it harder to see thru them. Neither vehicle has fog lights and I don't think the Base's lights are aimed any higher than the Bronco II. The bronco II's lights don't seem as bright for sure, but I wouldn't expect brighter alone to make it worse. Yes the falling flakes would be brighter but so would the ground.

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[redone17]

Great write up. Thanks for sharing.

 

[dgorsett]

I previously have owned 3 BIIs, loved them. So far my 6 g is living up to the legacy.

 

[Montana Bronco]

Please explain how your braking technique is somehow better than ABS in the snow.

 

[Lil Red Broncette]

Please explain how your braking technique is somehow better than ABS in the snow.

This is complicated to explain, so I'll give the short answer and then follow up with the why.

The simple answer is that I am not trying to simulate manually what ABS does in the snow, I take advantage of the fact without ABS I can choose to lock my wheels which in certain circumstances will brake in a shorter distance. Snow in is one of those. It does mean sacrificing some steering control, but I can deal with that easily.

Let me explain why locked wheels can sometimes be better. To do this I need to first sumarize how ABS works. ABS works on the principle that static friction is higher than sliding (kinetic) friction. In other words, it takes more force to cause something to start sliding than the force needed to keep it sliding. This means if the wheel is kept just short of starting to slide the higher static friction force can be used to stop the vehicle. Wheels locked would be limited to the lower sliding force. And in practice it works. most of the time.

The theory only works however if the surface is not changed by the braking itself. Suppose for example the surface can be damaged by wheel lock and that and the material underneath the surface yields better traction. In this instance ABS will work to keep the wheels from locking up thus braking force is limited by the lower traction top surface rather than the better traction obtained.
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ABS works great on dry and wet pavement because the surface doesn't change when braking is applied. Going into snow, mud or loose gravel the surface changes when the wheels lock making the benefit less clear.

Back around when I got my first ABS vehicle 30 years ago, a friend who is an engineer for Mercedes Benz had given a presentation about ABS to a local group. It was very informative as was the data he shared. It showed relative stopping distances of ABS equipped vehicles compared to non-ABS of the same vehicle. Ot showed in most conditions that ABS was equal to better than non-ABS. It did show for ABS equipped vehicles a 15% (up to as much as 40%) longer stopping distance in the snow. The other places where ABS faltered a bit was loose gravel and mud.

When it came to snow they explained that the shorter distance from the non-ABS vehicle was because of how the locked wheels dug into the surface underneath to a degree and piled snow in front of the wheel causing more drag thru the snow than rolling on top of the snow.

ABS systems have gotten better since then but the physics remains and some conditions one can do better with wheel lock. Even in snow there are times ABS is better, particularly when very cold with compacted snow where there is better traction.

Of course in my Base vs B2 comparison they are different vehicles and not all things are the same. I have done A/B comparisons with the same vehicle with ABS functioning and then disabled.

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