4WD System Temporarily Unavailable

[PJohnno]

Went beach driving today - Goolwa to Murray Mouth - about 15km one way.
Didn't air down as the beach is pretty hard, just a few soft spots once you get near the mouth.
I was in AUTO mode.

Anyway I got to about 500m from the Mouth and this EVIC message came on:
"4WD System Temporarily Unavailable".

Also the orange ESC Activation/Malfunction light came on.

So I stopped and turned off the engine, waited a minute then turned the engine on:
"4WD System Temporarily Unavailable" message and orange ESC light both showed again.

The sand was a bit softer near the Mouth so I successfully engaged 4W Low and drove the last bit to the Mouth - low range seemed to be working okay.

I headed back towards Goolwa in low range and after a couple of kms I switched out of low range and back to AUTO mode.

The orange ESC light was on all this time and stayed on all the way back to Goolwa. After a couple of kms on the bitumen the orange ESC light went off and has stayed off.

I've done this same stretch a few times, plus I've done other shorter, softer beach drives and never had the "4WD System Temporarily Unavailable" message before.

Anyone else had this?
Do I need to get anything checked out?

[lujabe]

Yep, pretty common... when in sand in high range modes the power train is constantly shuffling power bank and forth and left and right between wheels. This tends to heat things up and then you’ll get the warning and it’ll make you wait till things cool down a bit.

When running in low range, the torque split is fixed 50:50 front:rear and things seem to run a bit cooler. I usually just whack it in low on sand and leave it there. If it’s soft I’ll lock the rear diff to further minimise the torque shuffling.

[PJohnno]

Originally Posted by lujabe

Yep, pretty common...

Thanks for the explanation.

Looks like I did the right thing by putting it into low range.