The first step of our 2009 Moto Trend, Truck of the Year event starts here at Chrysler's Yucca Arizona proving grounds. We are at the vehicle dynamics facility where there is plenty of asphalt to stretch our legs and do all of the instrumented testing that we do.
We are going to start off with acceleration. Our acceleration testing involves driving from 0 to the quarter mile, not only empty but also loaded with a trailer. These trucks work for living after all. Our trailers are each loaded to 75% of the rated towing capacity of each vehicle. Our braking test is a simple 60-0 panic stop, full pressure on the brake pedal, they all have anti lock brakes after all. We only test in the unloaded condition because with the trailer it's more a case of the trailer brake performance than the truck.
Pickup trucks aren't particularly great handling vehicle so we don't subject them to our typical Figure 8 test. We do however measure their lateral acceleration by circulating at 200 foot diameter circle twice in each direction and averaging the times. In addition to the instrumented testing, we can do at approving grounds like this we get a really nice chance to sample all the cars on the same dirt roads because let's face it, pickup truck owners, a lot of them live in rural areas and drive on dirt roads. It is real super heavy duty off roading but it's really nice sand washes, gravel roads lit bit of bumpy stuff nothing too serious but a really nice evaluation of how different trucks feel in real world hurl situations.
Some of the sand washes are loose enough that it gives us a pretty good evaluation of the four wheel drive systems which is an evaluable or a part of these kinds of things. So far the sand has been doable with the two wheel drive vehicles as well but at some point we anticipate that will cease to be the case.
Extreme durability events like this Power Hop Hill, are great for evaluating things like chassis rigidity. But let's face nobody really seeks a road like this. So, for the next step in our evaluation we off to the real world roads. Stay tuned.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services