I havent found that hill descent button yet. Will have to look for it! Busy installing a class 3 factory hitch and wiring harness on the wife's newish x5d. It was the only diesel suv I could find on the market. Hitch (aka rear collision mitigation system) is pretty straightforward except plugging a bunch of new leads into the fuse block and CAN bus setup. I am also supposed to reprogram it to turn the trailer module setting on; will have to see if my old VAG setup from the vw will do that.
In Georgetown we had a little hill like that ending in a T with T street. I slid the 85 wagon down on glare ice one morning and ate an ice berm off to one side to avoid running out into cross traffic. Then watched as every subsequent car with abs managed the hill successfully, and every car without abs slid down and ran into something. It was really something, all happening in slow motion, watching those computers manage each wheel multiple times per second. Abs is the only thing I feel the 85 td is lacking. We did factory pickup on a new 84 audi; that car was so much more advanced than an 85 mercedes, really. Abs was standard, and flush glass. On Jan 6, 2018 11:01 AM, "Jim Cathey via Mercedes" <mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote: > This turned out to be one of the skating rink thaw days that plague our > hill, and Jill managed to make it 50 or so feet down before losing control > (at low speed) and bashing into the ice berm at the side. She walked back > home, leaving the car cocked in the roadway with the flashers on. (Not a > good place, if anybody else were to come by.) We walked back out, and were > barely able to make it down to the car without falling, mostly due to > careful path choices. The car wasn't even badly stuck, but it couldn't go > forward nor backward on the thick glare ice. Further attempts in that line > would only have swung the ass end out further into harm's way. As it was > I'm not sure anybody coming by would be able to miss the car, but traffic > was essentially nonexistent. > > The conditions looked bad, but nothing really worse than many other days in > the past, so I figured that if I could just get unstuck I could probably > get to the bottom of the hill OK. My other option was to try to > deliberately pivot the car around the stuck wheel by gunning it and letting > it swing around so that it was facing backwards down the hill, then back > down. (I have actually done this before, but it's pretty scary. The only > other real option was to call for a tow out, which would have left us very > vulnerable to being part of a wreck during the no-doubt lengthy time it > would have taken a chain-equipped tow truck to arrive.) I decided to try > throwing gravelly chunks of ice from the berm under the tires so that I > could back away from the berm a bit. I had to hang onto the car to > stay upright as I carried gravelly ice to each wheel. Before setting out I > punched the magic "Hill Descent Mode" button, something that we've never > used before, but which is intended for slippery steep downhills off-road. > The conditions certainly qualified! The car grunched and crunched quite a > bit and I was able to back up a bit, then move forward and turn away from > the berm and proceed on downhill. The car seemed fairly unstable, and there > was a real party going on under the hood as the car managed its brakes > independently to keep me creeping under some semblance of control. > > It worked! I was able to reach lower elevations of the hill, where the ice > was much less problematic, whereupon I turned off the Descent switch and > drove normally (for the conditions). At the bottom of the hill I turned > around and gunned it, and rocketed back up the hill as per usual under > these conditions, where forward momentum is a crucial component of getting > past the worst bits. (Hey, it beats walking back!) The car's Dynamic > Stability Control was kicking in a lot, but I was able to get back home > without too much trouble. No harm, no foul. The car was clearly up to the > task, validating its choice in the first place. The Nokian Hakkapeliitta > studded snow tires continue to perform admirably in this, their sixth, > year. > > Lessons for SWMBO in the future, on such days: > > 1) Stay home! > 2) Use the Hill Descent Mode. > > -- Jim > _______________________________________ > http://www.okiebenz.com > > To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ > > To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: > http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com > > _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
