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Just bought a 2012 Nissan Pathfinder LE. I live in Colorado where the weather can be pretty random and very location specific. This creates areas of the town where snow may be covered in some areas and areas have completely dry pavement.

Normally on my drive to work (30 minutes) on a snow day, I could be driving maybe 15 minutes over ice and snow and 15 over normal dry pavement. Alternates between maybe 2 minutes ice, 1 minute dry, 1 minute snow, etc. Pretty random depending on street I am on.

I've heard that putting my car in 4wd in dry pavements is bad but obviously changing every 2 minutes isn't ideal… Definitely a noob question but would this cause issues to my drive train or vehicle in general, driving in 4wd with these various road conditions?

IT_User
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1 Answers1

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That's an unfortunate scenario. While it's not the end of the world to use 4wd on pavement in your case, you would want to keep the speed low, and avoid tight turns--turn off 4wd if you are going to be going fast or turning tight.

But yeah, you are going to be wearing our parts of your drive train (I think transfer case in particular) using it like this. Ideally you should only be using 4wd in low traction scenarios. Honestly, an AWD system makes more sense for the conditions you describe; 4wd just isn't meant to be used in the way you're using it (always on, engage when necessary).

Edit: asker mentioned in comments that an 'auto' mode is available on his car, which is essentially a 'auto-engage 4wd upon slip detection' mode, which makes the most sense for his described use case.

Kyle Baker
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