hello everyone and welcome In this video
thought I'd do a little bit of a
long-term update on my Subaru Crosstrek
and specifically talked about how this
thing does in snow
I've only thing for about five months
I've got 1,500 miles on it so I haven't
driven that all that much about a lot of
the time that I have been driving it has
been in the snow going up and down this
mountain road to go to the ski slope and
there's been a lot of snow we actually
have 15 inches on the ground at one
point and I was driving around in it the
back alley behind my garage gets really
built up with snow gets really deep right
now I'm the shots that I'll show it's
not quite as deep it's rained since and
so a lot of it has melted but still
fairly deep back there if you enough
that I can't get my s2000 out and this
thing is honestly just been a champ
it's been able to handle pretty much
everything I've thrown at it definitely
in the really deep snow
you know there are situations where I'm
burning the clutch a little bit because
I'm slipping a little too long you know
there's not a low gear range in this
obviously but it's been an awesome
vehicle in the snow and you know these
bridgestone blizzak ws80
which I put on it after this winter
season they have been great as well may
seem to have really good grip you know
in really bad condition so they've been
nice to have. A little things I wanted to
talk about was how the all-wheel-drive
system in this vehicle works and
basically subaru manual transmission
vehicles motor vehicles with manual
transmission can have very similar setup
as far as the all-wheel-drive system
so you've got your engine torque that
has a 50:50 split throughout this coupling
To the front rear axles and then there's
an open differential in both the front
and the rear so you've always got a
nominal 50:50 split going to the front
and the rear and then if one of those
actual starts to spin up because it
doesn't have traction that viscous
coupling in the middle that's purely
mechanical device will send torque to
the other axle which has more grip so no
electronics involved with that this
coupling and it can differ that torque
ratio is it won't be 50:50 know maybe an
80:20 split or 70:30 split to the axle
which has more grip now one of the
interesting things that I've noticed
while I've been driving is i've heard
the ABS motor kicking on while I've been
driving in snow and that's why I've been
on the throttle and so I didn't realize
I didn't know if subaru actually did this
or not but you know a problem with open
differentials is if I have one of the
tires in the front spinning and one of
the tires in the rear spinning that
means that basically have no traction
I'm not going anywhere
well super has a clever way of fixing
this which is fairly common in the
industry there's different cars that
use this trick as well but what they do
is they call it LSD very cleverly
limited-slip device rather than
differential there are not there is not
a limited-slip differential in the front
or the rear there is that viscous
coupling in the center but what this limited
slip device does is if one of those wheels
start to spin and either the front or
the rear you'll use your brakes to break
that, slow that wheel down and then
you're going to send more torque to the
wheels that actually has traction and so
that's a good clever solution
I mean it's actually been really helpful
i've heard it you know coming on while I've been
in really deep snow
you'll hear that abs motor that
individualize wheel that slipping and so
you can send torque to the other side so
really there's very few scenarios
because of that feature that you know
you're going to get stuck in this
vehicle you've got plenty of ground
clearance 8.7 inches when you get the
right tires on this and it does a really
great job so I've been really impressed
with it honestly it's been pretty
amazing
now isn't an STI like no the STI has
limited slip front & rear and a really
cool center differential which can fully
lock up this can't do that and it
doesn't have those
super high-end off-road features it has
more ground clearance than the STI
honestly I wouldn't have been driving
the snow that I was driving in this with
my old STI just because it didn't have
the clearance that this has so the
all-wheel drive system in this is really
good you know it's not like it's got
full locker front and rear you can rock
crawl and it doesn't have a crawl ratio
so you know you're limited by your first
gear's ratio which is pretty aggressive
and you can crawl pretty slow but even
still i find myself slipping the clutch
in certain situations where I'm going
really slow in order to get over an
obstacle smoothly so you know it's not
the world's greatest off-road vehicle
and that's certainly not what I'm trying
to say here but it does a really good
job of handling snow and ice in
situations like this which i'm driving
in this year is very minor stuff but I've
been in some much deeper stuff in this
vehicle and as long as you keep the
momentum the all-wheel-drive does a
great job of sending torque to the
wheels that have traction on these tires
you great job of accelerating braking
turning etcetera so I've been really
pleased with it overall as far as some
of the other downsides of the vehicle
just kind of getting into the long-term
ownership thing I still do you wish you
had a cool engage and it does have the
rev hang which is a little annoying
honestly I've gotten used to it and I
don't notice it quite as much I'm but
basically what i'm doing every time I
shift gears is letting my foot
completely off the gas pedal waiting a
little bit and then I'll close the
throttle and then pressing the
clutch in and shifting and then it will
be much quicker and smoother but there's
that period of time we're just letting
your foot off and waiting for it to stop
giving it throttle, so a little annoying
I've gotten over it it's not a sports
car that don't care if it was sporty I'd be
a little more frustrated like how the
WRX behaves in a very similar fashion
and you know you want to be shifting
quickly in that car versus this thing is
just something to put around in but
honestly aside from that it's been awesome
having ground clearance it's amazing
what you can go over with just a few
more inches over what you know most stock
vehicles have like my STI had almost six
inches
which is good but then you get closer to
nine inches and it's pretty impressive
you know how few times you're
encountering situations where it's like
no I can't get over that. those extra
couple inches actually go a long way
especially when you have a shorter
wheelbase vehicle like this crosstrek so
I've really been enjoying it overall
fuel economy is one thing I did want to
chat about and i can pull it up and see
what it's been
I've been driving a lot of city traffic
and you know driving in the snow a lot and
driving when it's really cold in short
distances
it's been doing 23 mpg for this tank
which isn't that good
I believe that's actually it's city
rating but I've been driving in deep
snow and letting it idle and warm up and
stuff like that and doing different
videos actually did a video with it just
sitting there idling for 10 minutes so
my overall average for the car with
these fifteen hundred seventy miles on
it is 29 miles per gallon and that's you
know I've had a car topper on top so
from an arrow standpoint its head that
up there and done a lot of stuff not on
roads and driving in snow and stuff like
that on these 1,500 miles so 29 miles
per gallon
I'm pretty pleased with that considering
the conditions and the fact that i've
had that big chopper up there you know
which is just basically a big wind block
that's just the air brake whenever
whenever I'm driving so overall yeah i
mean fuel economy I think it could be
a little bit better the CVT that I drove
i was easily able to get into the mid
30s - hi 30s, I even did some some highway driving
and I managed to get 41 over like 60 miles
or so in the crosstrek CVT so you
know the manual transmission definitely
does takeaway for fuel economy is
concerned but you get higher wheel
torque on better acceleration in the
manual version them CVT so you know I'm
willing to trade off for that and it's
you know more fun to drive
now if you're wondering why the
cinematic quality, why the video
footage from this video with a little
bit better than usual
that's not my doing you know that I'm
not that talented with the camera that's
the guys from gears and gasoline Ben and
Ben they're awesome they've been hanging
out for the weekend
and we're doing a video for their
channel which is gonna be what it's
gonna be called? getting to know engineering
explained getting to know
engineering explained it's going to be
kind of a glimpse into my channel so I'm gonna
include a link here at the end of
this video which you can click somewhere
in the middle or whatever and also
include a link to their channel so you
can check that out
they've done this with some other
channels regular car reviews that didn't blue and
that didn't blue and do it with Dan so they
kinda got these little mini
documentaries on different channels that
are pretty cool you should check them
out thanks for watching