I assume you are in Quebec if you need to have them on by Dec 15th, good thing you are putting your snow tires on tomorrow, there is meant to be 20cm of snow in Montreal on Wednesday, should be interesting. You must have saved a packet buying your car in the US.

 

Well I drove my RX through snow and slush today down I-77 in mountains of WV, VA, and NC in a 12 hour trip from Ohio to SC. As a rule this same trip has taken me about 10 hours. We saw 3 bad accidents and were stopped dead by one for about a half hour. I must say the RX handled flawlessly with not one indication of sliding or slipping. The roads were snow covered in spots and slush covered in most areas of the mountains. The speed of the flow of traffic was between 40 and 65 MPH. After a while I felt very safe and confident driving the RX in those conditions. My car has the Bridgestone All Season tires.
We continue on tomorrow into Florida for a week of R&R, then we get to head back north again.

 

I got the pretty positive and good experience today, too.

Driving it from NYC to Boston via I95, I91, I84, I90, and I95, along with rain, fog, sleet, and snow, the roads are miry and slushy with some fresh snow. The car handled well in low speed and high speed.

*Bridgestone tires are working good.
*Windshield wipers and rear wipres are good.
*Defogger (front, rear and sides) are good.

During driving, I did turn on the foglights.





Some concerns...

- Well, the snow are only a few inches, and it snow after a few hours rain. I don't know how this car will work if we have full of snow.

- I was unable to feel and differentiate between FWD and AWD during driving. I even didn't know if AWD was kicking in. Maybe I was driving all the way with FWD-only today. Is there anyway to figure out? Thanks.

 

Post pics of your RX's in snow.

 

Oh no, 20 cm? There goes the neighbourhood
Yes I live in Montreal and yes I bought my RX for the same price as a fully loaded Toyota Venza in Montreal

 

Well... still snowing lightly. I took a few shots because of your words...

First 2 pics are someone else's RX10.

The last 2 are mine.
.

 

nice. there is not way to telling if it is in FWD or AWD. I guess if you didnt feel anything, then it came on flawlessly. remember the AWD lock button too...

 

This link, http://www.lexus.com/models/RX/featu...ntrol_awd.html , indicates RX can shift the small amount of torque to the rear when it works under its active torque control.

Well, I thought I should feel the some kind of difference when pressing that button and forcing RX to apply all the power to 4 wheels. I guess the way RX is moving under AWD mode (press the button - 50:50) is unlike the way under normal FWD (100:0). I should feel it, right?


Maybe I should try 2 modes under full throttle. Then I will feel something... But I worry my full-throttle will make RX's active torque control turn it into AWD (50:50).

 

theoretically, you will not be able to tell a difference between FWD and AWD unless you are going under full throttle (torque steer), or if you are slipping and sliding. And in both of those cases, you will have the AWD kick in, or even VSC/VDIM.

I dont see any area where you would be able to manipulate the system to feel the difference between the two

 

Thanks for your helps here.

This is what I think - when driving powerful FWD vehicle, we can feel the car is kind of pulling you forward. RWD is likely pushing you forward. FWD/RWD/4WD has make turns differently, too. When you're shift between FWD and AWD/4WD in powerful way, the difference should be able to tell.

Well, this jumps into the problems we talked above again, AWD/VSC may kick in.

 

Do you automatic wipers work well in the snow? Can the sensors sense snow like rain? I find the automatic wipers quite poor, they never seem to wipe when I want them to, and wipe too often when I dont want them to. I much prefer the old style timed wipers.

Also, I cant wait to see how good the wiper heaters/defrosters are when it gets really cold, thats such a great feature for those in the North East.

 

In dark conditions or at night without the sufficient light, the auto sensor wipers suck 'cause the sensor has hard time to recognize amount of spots on the windshield. In the regular conditions, snow/rain/sleet make no difference so far.

The bases of wipers, on the bottom of the windshield, are easy to get ice surrounded in the cold/snow weather. Some frozen ice attached to the bases and wipers did make some trouble this morning.

 

When starting the engine this morning, one short noise from teh crank or engine bay kind of made me scary. It's been more than a few times with this RX10 I have started the engine under 30F. But it's the first time I had the car stayed in snow/cold conditions at night in the parking lot.

Perhaps, it's just my imagination. I'll double check tomorrow morning.

 

Drove my 3rd gen RX this morning to work over back roads (slush packed ice & snow) in today's blizzard in New England...very sure footed and handled great, just like the 1st and 2nd gen's...the "Snow ECT" feature turned on really slowed the wheels down and made it feel more secure. Had to climb up a hill full of snow (hardly plowed), turned that "Snow" thing on and the RX went right up. Even though this is all wheel drive, I still drive slow for the conditions so I have time to stop if need be.

 

15" of snow forecasted for tonite, blizzard warning starts at 1:00 p.m. today, so I will be driving in some nasty stuff on the way home from work. No snow tires on my RX, just all season Dunlop's. The AWD seems to do pretty good in the snow so far, about the same as our 1999 Chevy Blazer does.