Has anyone had any problems driving the RDX on a beach - specifically in soft sand. I would assume the AWD system would prevent the car from getting stuck. Letting out half the air in tire would also help with traction. There are areas in Texas that are recommended only for 4x4's... the SW-AWD is not a full time 4x4.

 

I have no experience driving in the sand with an RDX, but motortrend did this test a few months back. The RDX came out on top.

http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/...son/index.html

 

Try dropping the psi in each tire.

 

Why would you drive your near luxury RDX to a beach, and have the sand beat up against that paintwork? Remember, it's sand... and it is like sand blasting your paint when you spin those wheels...

Man, people today on this thread (only today though) are really weird with their questions...

 

You bought an AWD SUV, it should be able to handle anything LIGHT, just because you buy an Hummer H1 doesn't mean it can't go on the road.

Luxury shouldn't have anything to do with offroad capabilities.

 

-If it's just "near" luxury, then who cares.

-Not everyone plans to keep their cars in pristine condition.

-An AWD SUV is designed to handle some light offroading such as a beach (note the numerous car tests that have been done with an RDX offroad).

-Using your logic, why would a luxurious Land Rover ever go offroad or why would anyone purchase a sports car and race where it might suffer damage.

-The point of AWD is so you don't spin the tires and blast the car with sand

-If you've ever been to Texas beaches you would understand that most of the driving is on wet sand where there is little or no chance of kicking up sand. It's only in certain areas where 4wd is recommended and even then, hopefully, unnecessary.

The bottom line is that just because you feel that your RDX should be kept on the road and in perfect condition doesn't mean someone else has other ideas and shouldn't drive whereever and however they want to....especially since an SUV should be perfectly capable of handling such a situation.

 

Kick up sand? I paid good money for those mud flaps. Beach speed limit is 15 mph and like all RDX owner I do adhere to the speed limits :-) Not much opportunity to spin donuts. I'll post pics if I do get down and dirt at Padre Island.

 

Sand is the least of your worries. I'd worry more about driving in salt water (or in wet sand ... wetted with salt water).

I don't see the point in doing it, myself.

 

Well that's not answering his question with complete accuracy. The RDX was rated #1 overall, but the Land Rover LR2 was by far the best in the sand:

"At Dumont, with T.R. set to Sand-General Driving, Grass/Gravel/Snow, and Mud and Ruts are the other settings-the LR2 eats through sand like Kobayashi does Nathan's Famous hot dogs, devouring dune after dune, seemingly toying with the others. Love the outdoors and off-roading? The LR2 is in a class by itself."

Despite the sand superiority of the LR2, I bought the RDX anyway because I never go off-road. Were I an off-roader, I would've picked the LR2.

 

Are people serious on this thread? You're going to be a SUV with SH-AWD and worry about taking it on the beach. You buy the thing so you can do these types of things. Sand is a lot better than the salt from winter time and I live in Boston so I plan on driving through plenty of it. That's why you take care of your car year round by washing and waxing it.

 

i'd worry about sand entering the engine bay. I've seen it happen on a civic (no idea what he was doing on the beach), he also had a cold air intake and lucky for him he had a good filter a well built motor :P

 

If one were to indulge in a little off road play, what's the best method to get through a slippery surface such as sand....turn VSA off and get the tires spinning or leave VSA on and minimize wheel spin?

I'm not an off-roader, nor do I play one on TV. I have experience driving fast on a paved road course in my sports car. This off road stuff is all new to me. Your help is greatly appreciated

 

Usually minimal wheel spin since otherwise all you'll be doing is kicking up sand into your undercarriage and what not. Thus digging, which, if you might be slightly stuck in the first place, could cause even more problems.

Usually you want to go slower and let the tires grip as much as possible to get yourself through it, especially if there's rocks and pebbles hidden in the sand, then that way you don't risk damaging anything either by rocks or sand or salt and snow in the winter time...


I'd say to keep the VSA on, but I am only speaking from experience from having winters in Ottawa and Toronto (especially last winter)...so i don't know how well that can be compared to rocks and sand.

 

Yes, some of us people here are seriouswhen we say we are not crazy about taking our RDX to the beach...

If I wanted to have fun driving on the beach and desert sand regularly, I would get a vehicle with a purposed built 4WD system which has off-roading capability, and underbody skid plates and proper underbody coating to handle all the crap that gets spun up when driving aggressively in those conditions... Toyotas has got a few of those trucks and SUVs...

RDX a sandy beach off-roading vehicle? I don't think so...

 

For regular off-road driving, certainly.

But it's possible that some owners might want to occasionally take their car in the sand and have it perform decently.

But I can't afford a different car for every little hobby. Otherwise I'd need a pickup for the twice a year I need to haul lumber. Or I would want a convertible sports car for those rare perfect days of driving with the top down. And I'd want a Land Rover or Wrangler or something for the beach and offroad. Unfortunately, that isn't realistic.

The RDX covers 99% of the driving I do though, even if it means taking it on the beach once or twice a year.

 

Bumping an old thread. Can anyone chime in with their experiences on how the RDX does on (soft) sand? My friends are planning a camping trip and they said that a 4x4 is needed to get to the campsite as it is on a beach.

Also got this from the MotorTrend article, but it didn't really describe too much.
"On sand, the SH-AWD doesn’t skip a beat, turning the RDX into a capable off-roader, although its 6.3 inches of ground clearance and fussy traction control (we couldn’t disable it with the tires deflated to 15 psi) make it more of a soft-roader."

 

In to hear a reply as well. Planning a little beach trip for July 4th...might be on the beach with the RDX so I'd like to know how to play that.

 

I'm taking mine to mustang island in corpus, i didnt spend 30k to keep in the garage.

 

^^ haha...I'm headed to Port Aransas...just north of where you'll be.

 

We've been taking the RDX to South Padre Island every summer for the last 3 years. Never had problem with the sand, wet or loose. The SH-AWD is very capable in this situation, the only thing you have to watch out for is the ground clearance. Avoid deep looking loose sand and we never gotten stuck once.

It is funny though, every year at Padre we see a lot of stuck 2WD trucks and SUVs, and the RDX keeps on going. Just make sure you get a good undercarriage wash after the trip, just like how you would anyways after a skiing trip. Some of you guys are too much of keep the car in pristine condition, like somebody mentioned before dont go fast and your paint will be okay. You can only go around fast as 10 mph anyways on the beach especially during federal holidays when the beach is packed!!

Additional info for people that have been to S. Padre Island, we have taken the RDX as far north as 10 miles after the last beach access. It's awesome!

 

That's awesome to hear! My friend just called the beach, and they said that AWD will do just fine. I can't wait to get there and checking it out. If I do get stuck, there will be several 4x4s to pull me out. LOL

 

This is a noob question...

So there are just openings along the beach meant for vehicle access? They invite you to come drive on the beach? What about camping out on the beach? Or do people just pull up their cars, unpack, enjoy the day, pack up and leave?

Ok sorry...that was more than 1 noob question...

 

Pretty much. This is the beach I'll be camping at. Pismo Beach in California.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJUYhNFE34w

 

The real question is...after the sand...will the RDX float on water and SHAWD it's way to help stop the BP OIL SPILL......
we'll see people......we'll see.............. HAHAHAHA

 

The RDX does great in sand. However the biggest caveat is the RDXs clearance. With sand, if your driving in unknown areas, the RDX will sit on its frame easily. So be careful of soft sand! If your following trails where trucks have passed through many times, the RDX will have no problem. Just dont expect to be captain explorer at all.

 

What should I deflate the tires to, to maximize traction? Or should I even bother at all?

 

This is my first post so thanks in advance for being on the boards here.

I'm headed to the outer banks of North Carolina next weekend and have been planning to hit the beach as well. I'm curious if anybody has been there with their rdx and got over the dunes?

I've walked the vehicle entrances before and the ruts can be almost knee deep. I'm pretty confident that it will be fine on the beach just not sure if I can get it there on it's own power. Fortunately my old man will be just ahead of me in his Diesel Dodge 3500 to yank me out of any trouble

Since I've never seen a single video and only a couple photos of the rdx on the beach it is my hope to record the beach entrance.

Please let me know if you have any experience with dunes and ruts in your rdx!

Thanks
Dan

 

I will let you know after this weekend. I am going to the beach this weekend, and hopefully some light off-roading.

 

Made it to the outer banks this afternoon. My first sand experience was in the driveway to the house! There is about a 10 foot patch of reasonably soft sand that I've been "practicing" on. So far so good. I went out for a late night drive to ramp 55 by the ferry and hit another good size patch of sand there as well. Unfortunately I can't get on the beach there until tomorrow as it is only day light hours available there.

I did hit the sand while turning around and ran through about 30-40 feet of it with no trouble. I didn't air down my tires either as we were just kind of cruising 12 south and hit the sand.

I can't wait to get to the beach in the morning and give it a good run and capture some video and stills. I'll post them up here when I can manage to get them off my iphone. In the meantime I guess I'll stick them on that youtube thing.

Chipmunk did you manage to get out any feedback?

Cheers,
Dan

 

I did not take my car camping as one of my other friends decided to take his Xterra but I can give some feedback. If you are just driving on the beach, it should not be a problem. What caused a problem for everyone in my group was when we started to head towards the super soft near the sand dunes. It did not matter if you had AWD or 4WD, if you did not have the correct tires on, your car WILL get stuck.

I have some videos on my Flickr page.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamalvi...7624688807160/

 

Is the dude in the red truck suppose to be bailing everyone out or was he there just to have fun as well and he was being a good samaritan? Thanks for the vids. This gave me a reality check on where I should be taking my RDX.

 

He's one of my friends. I sure was glad that I didn't have to take my RDX and get it stuck in the sand.

 

Ahh day 2.5 of vacation and finally got to hit the sand properly. For the record we had 4 different vehicles out there today and they all performed great. We had a Dodge 3500 Quad Cab 4x4 Diesel (my old man's) a 2010 VW Tiguan, and a Toyota Highlander as well as the 2007 RDX. The only beach mods if you could even call them that are my tires. When I replaced them at 40k I put something on with a taller sidewall to give me more traction when I aired down so I'm running continental cross contacts or something like that.

Here is what is are some notes from the experience.

The long drive to the beach across the interdunal road was a mix between hard pack and pretty soft rutted sand. I stayed in the ruts and kept the vehicle moving and had no problems at all.

The AWD power display showed a pretty even split most of the time from front to back.

The rdx could use about 3 more inches of clearance and or some skid plates to make it a proper beach comber.

When it was time to leave the beach we had to climb a dune in some really soft stuff while banging a very hard right, there was plenty of power and plenty of grab though it slowed at the top and the wheels were spinning it never stopped or sank it just kept moving to the top. The tiguan was following too close and when I turned hard right I lost a lot of speed and the tiggy had to almost stop so he bottomed out and got partially stuck for a brief moment. Once I hit the harder stuff at the top we just gave him a little push down the hill and he powered right up it. So don't tailgate on the beach!

I've never driven on other sand but I've been to beaches all around the world and this is some of the deepest softest sand I've seen. It wasn't necessarily worse than other places but it certainly was as soft and deep as anywhere else I have been.

There were a few moments I wasn't sure if the vehicle would pull through as the wheels spun more than I would have liked but it never let up and never stopped pulling forward even through the deep stuff that was scraping the floorboards.

My final opinion is this the RDX was great on the sand and I have quite a bit of confidence in it now. That said I would hesitate to hit the beach alone because I saw just how easy it was for the tiggy to get stuck when it lost momentum and bottomed out. It would have been a little more difficult to get the rdx unstuck if I was alone. So all in all if you have an rdx get that sucker on the beach you will love it. Follow the rules air down to about 18 psi bring a shovel a jack a tow strap and a buddy to pull you out if necessary.

All in all it was an awesome day on the beach!

See the photo evidence as well.

This is where we were.
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/album...4510184785#map

 

Apparently I didn't quite know how to add an image yet. Sorry rookie error.

 

Ok got stuck in the sand today! In fairness it was super deep and well over the capability of the RDX. I knew this right away as I turned the corner but by then it was too late. An interesting thing happened though and I would really like to hear some thoughts on this. As I was trying to push the rdx out my wife was applying throttle but we couldn't get the wheels to spin. I'm assuming the vsa traction control caused us some issues here.

I immediately started digging hoping to get the wheels to move but alas they did not without a lot of throttle and worse the rear wheels never spun at all. Though I was really wedged into the sand up to the innards I think I would have had a chance if I could get the wheels moving again. We tried to rock and we got some motion but then the power was cut to the wheels again.

My old man came and yanked us out pretty quick but had I been alone or stuck for a long time I might have tried to pull the vsa fuse and see if that would have helped. I know there is a vsa button but when you air down the tires it will not allow you to turn it off. This is a real bummer.

Anybody have any thoughts about no power getting sent to the wheels?

As a final note the sand was scorching hot and digging was not a lot of fun.