My 4x4 is NOT 4WD! And Neither is Yours! (probably)

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

The editing was confusing so I'll clarify here, 0:33 I was not putting the traction boards on the wrong side of the tires. 1/4 speed at 0:37 makes it more clear what's going on, I shouldn't have speed up the footage so much and should've explained more. At that point I was trying to go forwards, since I figured it would be easier getting unstuck by going downhill, so the traction boards are on the correct side for going forwards. I also tried digging some snow out from under the tire with a crowbar, tried putting sand under the tires, and tried bumping it backwards a couple times, which you can see all that on 1/4 speed, but none of it was working. These boards were a $20 impulse buy from a hardware store and it shows, garbage. I'm sure a good pair of maxtracks or something would've gotten me out, or at least I hope so given how much those cost. When they didn't work I pulled the explorer out backwards with the truck since that's the only way I could hook up to it. Always feel free to correct me when I do something stupid, I'm here to learn as much as everyone else is, but this is one time I can say with confidence I wasn't being as stupid as it looks 😅. This time. Thanks for watching!

[@bbtjdonnelly14]

The 6.5 diesel yanking out thee ol cummins was just gold 😊

[@cmennenger]

Build is great. That front suspension work was really impressive.

[@flonga2302]

Amazing channel, learned so much. Hope you keep posting.

[@42Goopy42]

I've said it before but I'll say it again, I dig the suspension setup! I would reinforce the radius arm brackets a bit but otherwise it is nice. I've got 2 trucks with a d50ttb and I plan to rip one of them to build another truck up.

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

Thats awesome, id love to see the build if you ever end up doing it! Eventually when I get this thing on a serious trail I'll video the TTB and see how well it does.

[@42Goopy42]

@BuildSomethingAuto it ought to do pretty well! I've seen a few similar explorers running modified 35/45ttb with tons of travel. Thing was killer. Not 100% decided on the truck but swingset steering and turning the beams w/ reinforcement is what I want. It'll either be my jellybean f150, or if I want to get weird with it, one of my toyota minis. Haven't decided if I would make any vids on it, but it would be fun to experiment with that.

[@sadaaromin13]

Just finished my Dana 60 swap with a shackle flip. Really happy with my truck… glad to see you posting again. Excited to see what’s next!

[@rafadaranger]

Really nice video to watch!!! Keep the great work 🙏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[@Javii96]

I used to drive a lowered kia in high school. Then i upgraded to a lowered corolla in college. Then i had a daughter and became a full fledged man driving a leveled ram. I know very little about the offroad world and when I saw this i subbed. I enjoyed this thanks for teaching me something

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

that's awesome thank you!

[@twizzlerdizzler]

Thank you for teaching us as you go. I love how you break down your build and explain very well.

[@dig.Doug.]

With the weight of a Cummins on the front axel it helps traction immensely.

[@Moose400ex]

I need friends like this in my life to hang out with and build cool stuff either cummins turbo diesel swaps! why don’t i have friends like this…im like a plethora of knowledge when it comes to one ton anything and cummins 12/24v turbo diesels, fabrication and welding!

[@dusty7264]

Great video I will have to see if my make a lunch box locker for a 1990 Toyota 4x4 truck.

[@Javii96]

Cs get degrees made me loose it. 😂 love it

[@Matteo-xm6xo]

Nice man very nice 😎

[@brandont65]

I beg your pardon sir, my square body suburban is most definitely 4x4. The general made sure the rear locked automatically, and i made sure the front is selectable. It is most certainly 4x4

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

I said probably! 😂

[@jadesluv]

Don‘t you have manually locking hubs? You get out of truck and turn the lever knob on each wheel to lock the hub to the axle. And a differential that will lock both rear axles together, called a locker. But then when your are on pavement you have to get out and unlock your hubs so you can drive on curved roads

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

Yes! This is another reason Id argue that in the front an expensive selectable locker is even less necessary. When I eventually get a locker in the front the manual hubs make it "selectable" even if it were a full spool.

[@ryanpenrod1859]

I don't think you know how to use traction boards...

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

Probably not, but they were also VERY cheap traction boards picked up on a whim at a hardware store. The snow wasnt soft enough to get them under the tire and they may as well have been made from teflon, couldnt get a tire to grab no matter what I tried. I need to get a real set, they cost atleast 10x what I paid for these.

[@godhammer666]

@@BuildSomethingAuto Cheap or not, you had them on the wrong side of the tire. You were trying to get traction going in reverse, yet you had them in front of the tire. Sick build though.

[@GregoryVeizades]

@@BuildSomethingAuto Yeah that wasn't the issue.

[@dirtlegdirtleg]

​@@GregoryVeizades the problem is definitely user error and a lack of common Sense

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

I was going forward 😉. Figured I had a better chance getting it to move by going downhill than uphill. It isn't obvious in the sped up footage, maybe I shoulda showed more of it.

[@cecilandrews7479]

Your first problem is you put all that weight on the front axle. Off-road and weight don't go together

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

Eventually Ill go weigh it. Id be willing to bet its still lighter than a gladiator with similar sized tires and axles - considering it started off weighing 1,000 lbs less to begin with. It was never meant to be a "perfect" rig, it was meant to be fun, and cheap, and so far its doing a great job of both of those things. I could literally have 10 of these for the price of a hemi rubicon 🤣

[@cecilandrews7479]

@@BuildSomethingAuto well I'm all about fun. I've been playing with 4 * 4 for the last 50 years. So if you're having fun doing it keep going👍

[@ding9633]

Your driveway slopes down into the garage. Why?

[@jadesluv]

Thats so if the heat is off in the garage you can have a neat place to practice ice skating

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

Couldnt tell ya. Currently in a rental and there are lots of... strange.. choices the owner has made with this house. Theres also a small ditch in front of the garage for runoff and that didnt help my case getting stuck, the front wheels actually needed to go up a small amount to get back into the garage despite being on a hill. Believe it or not this is after I got out there with a shovel and levelled it out a bunch, before doing that I wasnt sure the explorer would make it isnide without hitting the door frame.

[@dirtlegdirtleg]

@BuildSomethingAuto Why the fuck would you put traction boards in front of the tire when you were trying to go backwards?

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

I wouldnt. I wasnt trying to go backwards. Hard to see since I speed up the footage, but at that point I was just trying to get it unstuck and back inside, figured I had a better chance of driving forward then backwards. When that failed I just yanked it backwards with the truck so I could get some speed to get back into the garage forwards.

[@Pateramalina]

open diff should be criminal

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

Youve gotta start somewhere 😅

[@Pateramalina]

@@BuildSomethingAuto i was thinking about manufacturer. Bought similar few years ago. Lift, massive tractor tires, snorkel, special paint for bushes etc. Straight after transaction i went test it and cannot exit muddy puddle xD I was so fixed at monster truck looking totally miss idea it could still be open diff.. ^^

[@j.danaclark2166]

Let's face it, with (unless my eyes deceive me) twin I-beam, no one wants to brake into those diffs especially if a solid axle is in the future.

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

Actually, believe it or not I intentionally swapped in the TTB. No solid axle for me. It's a dana 50 TTB out of an F250, had to swap it to coils since they came with leafs. It's built like a ford 9", removable 3rd member and high pinion (strong). I wanted to try beams for a challenge and because I like how smooth they run. Hopefully I'll get a chance to test it on some harder trails soon. kzbin.info/www/bejne/aYXLm2aBar9_i6M

[@j.danaclark2166]

@@BuildSomethingAuto i am very fond of the twin I beam. I own 12 of the 1/2 tons, a pretty even mix of 4x4 and 2wd, and 1 3/4 ton. All those and run them for years on the bee farm and never once had to tear into the front diff. In my experience there's absolutely nothing wrong with them. But we never did any recreational off roading, a days work was more than enough adventure some days. One year I twisted 3 drive shafts in my pickup. I didn't pretzel them just took the ujoints enough out of phase that they'd vibrate on the highway.

[@locked-down4wders671]

Mines twin locked

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

Youre the reason I put "probably" in the title 🤣. Mine will be some day...

[@Friedbrain11]

As an "engineer" you should know better than to believe that the torque converter on an automatic gives you torque multiplication. If it actually did no one would run a 4 speed (or more ) in a vehicle. Getting something for nothing is not possible and if you are an engineer you know that is a fact. Get the front a limited slip center and you will be as close to 4 wheel drive as you can be with a street driven vehicle.

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

Youre confusing energy and torque. Power, energy over time, would be conserved assuming things like RPM (fuel injected) stay constant, but there is no conservation of torque. From an energy balance perspective the tradeoff in a torque converter is RPM, more fuel is being injected when they multiply torque, so they have no problem giving you more torque for the same wheel speed (but higher engine speed due to slippage). Its inefficient since it wastes fuel and creates a bunch of heat, but it still multiplies torque. The archetypal example would be "stalling" a torque converter when youre launching a drag car from a dead stop. Imagine the engine is spinning at 1800 RPM, and the wheels are stationary. Where does the fluid go in the torque converter, considering the transmission side isnt moving? It recirculates through the vanes in the converter which gives you a mechanical advantage, you get more fluid pressing harder against the transmission side of the fluid coupling. You can momentarily get 1.8x engine torque when "stalling" an automatic trans like this, and even more if you have a high stall converter that lets it slip even more (say a 2400 RPM torque converter, or a 3k). The same is true to a lesser degree when climbing a hill. As the load on the tires increases and the transmission speed begins to drop, but the engine speed is maintained, the fluid begins to recirculate more and give a torque advantage (not as large as the 1.8 stated earlier, but still some). Automatics have more torque when climbing hills, if the load of the hill causes wheel speed to drop - because the engine speed stays higher compared to a manual. Of course the disadvantage is that this slippage creates a large amount of heat. It is inefficient and wastes fuel which is why lockup torque converters exist, and slippage isnt desirable if your goal is fuel economy. Its less efficient, but still increases torque.

[@RyanAumiller]

​@@BuildSomethingAuto a fluid coupling absolutely can NOT output more torque than is put into it in the first place. If it actually multiplied torque it would be called a torque multiplier but that's not what it does at all. It converts a higher rpm input (where your typical combustion engine generates more torque) to a lower rpm output applying roughly the same amount of torque as the input (slightly less due to losses from fluid shear converting a very small amount of that input torque into heat) to this slower output speed. ANY actual torque multiplication comes from different gearsets connected between the torque converter and final drive. Remember torque is the amount of rotational force applied against a load. Kinda like how your rear axle was actually still driving two wheels through an open diff. An open diff does a 50/50 torque split. It ALWAYS applies the same amount of torque to both wheels regardless of their speed. problem is, once one starts spinning the amount of torque being applied drops to almost zero because the resistance to that motion (the load) drops to almost zero. It was still applying that minuscule amount of torque to both wheels.

[@tonybingham2399]

Torque converters are not just fluid couplings. They are in fact, torque multipliers. That is how cars were able to get away with having 3 speed (or the 2 speed Powerglide) transmissions. If you've ever driven a car from the 70's you'll notice how the engine RPM stays relatively the same while the vehicle speed increases. This is because of the torque converter. In a sense, they are like small CVT's. The main reasons modern vehicles are using 6+ speed automatics is for fuel mileage and emissions.

[@RyanAumiller]

@@tonybingham2399 it converts torque by multiplying INERTIA based on input/output speed differential. All losses aside the best multiplication factor you can get from a torque converter is 1, at stall speed, that is why you match the stall speed to the engine's peak torque output, otherwise it's a torque divider, it only multiplies by factors less than 1.

[@BuildSomethingAuto]

​@@RyanAumiller It can multiply torque, because the stator redirects fluid back through the converter multiple times, it functions like a wet gear reduction. More accurately, like Tony said, it functions like a CVT constantly changing the torque through it based on an input output speed differential. If you won't listen to us, maybe some sources will help. We're all here to learn, understand that you're mistaken about the function of a torque converter - but don't take our word for it, do some reading outside these youtube comments if you don't believe us. Here's an animation that shows it, although it's still hard to see what's happening: kzbin.info/www/bejne/np2aZqGYf5akZrs Here's a motortrend article: The stator redirects fluid from the turbine to the impeller, radically increasing the force of the fluid entering the impeller and multiplying the torque input from the engine. Basically, the fluid exits the center of the turbine and is redirected by the stator back into the impeller. This is a very slick trick and can be worth up to 2.5 times engine torque! This means that at a 2:1 torque multiplication ratio, an engine that is making 300 lb-ft of torque at a stall speed of 2,500 rpm will actually apply 600 lb-ft of torque to the input shaft of the transmission as the car leaves the starting line. www.motortrend.com/how-to/ccrp-0310-torque-converters/ Here's the wikipedia page: The maximum amount of torque multiplication produced by a converter is highly dependent on the size and geometry of the turbine and stator blades, and is generated only when the converter is at or near the stall phase of operation. Typical stall torque multiplication ratios range from 1.8:1 to 2.5:1 for most automotive applications (although multi-element designs as used in the Buick Dynaflow and Chevrolet Turboglide could produce more). Specialized converters designed for industrial, rail, or heavy marine power transmission systems are capable of as much as 5.0:1 multiplication. Generally speaking, there is a trade-off between maximum torque multiplication and efficiency-high stall ratio converters tend to be relatively inefficient around the coupling speed, whereas low stall ratio converters tend to provide less possible torque multiplication. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque_converter