Incusus
Adventurer
What he said... mostly.
The ToD system uses a dozen or so sensors to determine if the rear wheels are spinning faster than the front, how far the throttle body is opened, if the abs is engaged, and a slew of other things and gives it to the transfer case unit to decide what wheel needs torque when. It takes just a bit of time to gather and process that info, and in my opinion in serious conditions that split second seems a bit too late sometimes. Combine that with the fact that it does some things that are odd to me but probably a safety feature for soccer moms; for example disengage the fronts completely when making hard turns to keep from building up spring tension (which is when you need that traction sometimes!) and I decided to opt for a bypass so I could tell the truck when to stay in 4wd, no matter what it thought
I'd say that torque on demand is about like every other variable shift on the fly mechanism, which is to say its fine for moderately slick conditions, starting off from stopsigns in the winter, assisting with braking, that sort of thing. Its good for what it was designed for, which is mediocre road conditions.
On the other hand, I don't want/need lower gears or the drivetrain wear and poor fuel economy of constant 4wd (not to mention the expense of the swap itself), so Bills option is a bit to extreme for me. My trooper gets driven daily, winter or summer, highway, road, and off road, so a set of manual locking hubs and an override switch is the best option for me. I can unlock the front hubs and leave ToD off, effectively making it 2wd for highway use, lock the hubs and opt to use ToD for crappy road conditions when needed, lock the hubs and override ToD to a 50/50 split for heavy snow and ice, off highway use and almost everything else. When I need to get over/through something REALLY hairy, I can always fall back to the transfer case 4lo.
The mod isn't terribly expensive (less than $30), and is simple to do provided you take your time and make sure you get the correct pinout for your year trooper, just in case they made a change. I'd recommend it to anyone who isn't building a rock crawler.
The ToD system uses a dozen or so sensors to determine if the rear wheels are spinning faster than the front, how far the throttle body is opened, if the abs is engaged, and a slew of other things and gives it to the transfer case unit to decide what wheel needs torque when. It takes just a bit of time to gather and process that info, and in my opinion in serious conditions that split second seems a bit too late sometimes. Combine that with the fact that it does some things that are odd to me but probably a safety feature for soccer moms; for example disengage the fronts completely when making hard turns to keep from building up spring tension (which is when you need that traction sometimes!) and I decided to opt for a bypass so I could tell the truck when to stay in 4wd, no matter what it thought
I'd say that torque on demand is about like every other variable shift on the fly mechanism, which is to say its fine for moderately slick conditions, starting off from stopsigns in the winter, assisting with braking, that sort of thing. Its good for what it was designed for, which is mediocre road conditions.
On the other hand, I don't want/need lower gears or the drivetrain wear and poor fuel economy of constant 4wd (not to mention the expense of the swap itself), so Bills option is a bit to extreme for me. My trooper gets driven daily, winter or summer, highway, road, and off road, so a set of manual locking hubs and an override switch is the best option for me. I can unlock the front hubs and leave ToD off, effectively making it 2wd for highway use, lock the hubs and opt to use ToD for crappy road conditions when needed, lock the hubs and override ToD to a 50/50 split for heavy snow and ice, off highway use and almost everything else. When I need to get over/through something REALLY hairy, I can always fall back to the transfer case 4lo.
The mod isn't terribly expensive (less than $30), and is simple to do provided you take your time and make sure you get the correct pinout for your year trooper, just in case they made a change. I'd recommend it to anyone who isn't building a rock crawler.