New to pickups- preventing fishtailing

I just got my 23 TRD off road a few months ago and I’m experiencing ice in it now. I’m new to pickups and RWD vehicles, so I fishtailed for the first time (in my driving experience) this morning. Anyone found the best method of preventing this? I was going about 25mph around a turn. Little over 3000 miles so the tires are brand new.

 

What do you have for tires?

Go find an empty parking lot to practice in.

 

Stock wranglers

 

Get a couple hundred pounds of sand in the bed over the axle. When you start fish tailing turn INTO it. Stay off the gas and brake. Be gentle with acceleration and pump your brakes if you know youre on ice.

 

Practice. Learn to go light on the gas. Learn to look for ice. Guess having grown up driving rear wheel drive in ice country this has been second nature.

Parking lot suggestion is perfect.

Hardest part is learning to do opposite of instinct - stay OFF pedals when sliding.

 

Buy winter tires if you experience winter. Studded if you get a lot of icey conditions.

 

Welcome to TW.

I've driven a few trucks and some are worse than others, but ice? It's about being aware and how you drive, I still come across a slip 'n slide even in 4WD. Lowe's has "sand tubes" to throw in your truck, it will still slide on ice though.

- Old dodge tank - so heavy when it slides, all 4 slid.
- Nissan extended cab, Nissan regular cab - a little loose in the rear end
- Chevy extended cab - this thing would slide without hesitation, even on dry roads, it was the worst handling vehicle I've ever owned.
- Ford Ranger extended cab - drove the crap our of this thing on snow and ice, it was really predictable.
- '94 Toyota extended cab - Ditto, but as above, ice is ice
- '03 Taco - Funny story, we have a road here that was recently "fixed," you come up to a cross street at a stop light, but just before it there's this big DIP in the road like a roller coaster. Fast enough (on dry roads) and you even get that roller coaster flutter in your belly. It kind of slopes to the curb too, so it wants to throw you to the right. The first time in the winter I was in 4WD doing about 20-25 approaching the corner and the "dip" almost made me an attraction at the corner gas 'n sip. So it's all about how you drive, I watch for the dip now.

 

A former boss of mine drove the "cowboy cadillac" - an ancient chevy 2500 quad cab long bed. That truck would hydroplane in a desert. It was hands down the worst handling machine I had ever driven. I guess the front and rear axles were too far apart to talk to each other, because they were always in disagreement about which direction to go.


The 3rd gen is almost comical at how quickly it extinguishes a slide. Sometimes I give it a little goose to see if I can break the ass end free, and laugh at how the truck enters mom-mode and puts a stop to it. Usually I can get 90 degrees in before the invisible hand of correction shuts it down. Its one of the easiest trucks to learn the physics of pickup truck driving on.

That said, I never was impressed with any of the stock tires. I had firestones on mine, and they were beyond intolerable for wet traction. I would suggest making sure that air pressures are between 30-32 psi (and no higher), and maybe switch to a tire that has better all-weather reviews.

 

Thank you for all the suggestions and advice. I feel like the sand tubes suggested by rocknbill would work best for me since I tend to be told last minute to make part deliveries for work. I’d only dailied FWD sedans before so the fishtail was something I wasn’t looking forward to. I’ll definitely take some time to practice and thankfully I was able to correct my fishtail without any real issues, just something I’d like to avoid.

 

Also, I’m probably going to get an ARE cap before the end of winter so I’m expecting that will help me out.

 

learn to yell BONZAII!!

you're just an empty parking lot away from drift club!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEO8xEqOC9w

the ice is no fun, but practicing and learning to react and understand the physics involved in low traction situations makes this way easier. i rarely let off when the rear breaks loose. but i'll generally either roll a little more accelerator to maintain the angle, or lessen my accelerator input to ease back out of it. in many scenarios, rapid snap reactions(gunning it, slamming on the brakes, or immediately dropping all gas input) can create more problems by forcing the physics already in play to 'push' the vehicle into an area that you'd rather not be.

 

FWD ... steer into the slide, hope.
RWD ... steer against the slide.

Have a read: https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/tips-for-driving-in-the-snow.818813/

 

Drifting sounds fun, but not with oncoming traffic. A controlled environment would be good to test this all out in so I’ll just load the back up and look for winter tires for the time being.

 

Thank you for the link, I’m learning how to navigate the insane number of forums

 

I get ice a lot where I live/grew up so I know what to look out for thankfully. The issue is with black ice since we tend to freeze-thaw-freeze, sometimes you don’t know it’s there until it’s too late.

 

Go drive your truck on loose gravel roads and ice will become second nature. Many of us grew up in the country driving trucks on dirt roads. I was drifting before I knew it was a thing. Snow and ice are pretty much the same, just at slower speeds.

 

S1-S4 can be useful. On gravel and loose dirt it slows you down without brakes. On ice/snow it can slow you down without locking up the wheels.

S1-S6 (S-mode) means the truck cannot exceed that particular gear. It can auto-shift up to that point, but not past.

 

That’s the “manual” mode, right? I put manual in quotes because my first car was manual and it honestly annoys me how the S mode works on the Tacoma.

 

Yes, "manual mode", but really only "gear limiting". The first time you off-road down a windy loose-dirt road the S-mode will be welcome. Brakes on some surfaces just send you out of control, while S-mode (annoying as it is) lets you focus on steering and limits your speed.

 

Ok cool, that’s actually really good to know for the actual purpose of my truck, too. I work on tiny access paths made for ATVs and Gators down which I have to haul tools and equipment. I’ve dealt with some mud and kind of loose gravel so far but haven’t had to worry about ice on those yet