I feel like it has been a while since I've contributed to this thread with my personal car, so I figured I would take the opportunity to share some pictures I took over the holidays!
For the last 3 weeks, I have been staying up in the mountains around Leavenworth, WA with some family and friends. During my time up there, the average temperature was around 15-20 degrees F and we were getting around 1-2 feet of snow every few days. I ended up actually taking both of my vehicles up there (2020 Tacoma TRD OR and 2017 GSW 4motion), as I was slightly hesitant about the GSW potentially struggling or getting stuck since its on all-season tires. In fact, I even pulled the trigger on a brand new set of 265/70-17 Falken Wildpeaks for my Tacoma just to ensure we wouldn't have any issues getting around in Winter conditions.
Last Winter, the GSW was on a set of Blizzaks, which I ended up selling to make way for the 17x8.5" ET43 SM-10s with 235/45-17 Michelin AS4 tires. Where I live in SW WA, we don't see more than a couple of days of snow per year, so the all-seasons made a lot more sense than having two dedicated Winter/Summer sets. However, up north in the mountains, its a completely different story. With that said, I was absolutely blown away with how well the GSW did with the AS4s! We never got stuck once, even in deep snow, and the GSW felt far more confident to drive even compared to the Tacoma on fresh Wildpeaks with 4WD engaged. In fact, I was having a hard time noticing any major Winter performance differences with the AS4s compared to the Blizzaks I had last year!
After a few long drives in the snow, I kept noticing a strong brake smell coming from the GSW. I was driving with traction off and stability control as "off" as the factory programing would let me. Though, it was clear that the stability control system was still engaging quite a bit. This prompted me to use OBDeleven to code traction/stability control to be fully off after holding the ESC button. After making that change, I was finally able to have full control of the car and get into some absolutely silly drift angles! For anyone who drives their 4motion in the snow, I would highly suggest looking into doing this mod.
Anyways, here are a few shots I snapped while up there. Enjoy!
-Geirsen