How to brake

• Increase your braking distance accordingly when driving downhill and in poor weather & road conditions
• Use the default all-wheel drive setting for maximum traction on the road
• Adjust your brake settings in towing mode to best match the weight of your load

Video Transcript

G’day, it's Michael guest here.

What's been most of the year travelling around all around the country towing boats, this is the new Amarok fantastic tow vehicle 600 Newt meters of torque 10-speed Auto. Four-wheel disc brakes we're talking about braking here, in a minute but four-wheel discs on the Amarok and then I've got four-wheel electric hydraulic brakes on the boat.

So braking distance is something you really need to think about, so depending on conditions if you're travelling downhill you need to increase that braking distance behind the vehicle in that's in front of you and also if it's raining, slippery conditions then you need to think about braking conditions.

The other thing you can do too with the new Amarok it's got all those adjustments there so you've got two wheel drive, then you've got all-wheel drive and I would click into that all-wheel drive mode if I was towing in wet conditions when you plug your trailer in as soon as you plug your trailer in, the amok senses it straight away and it will go as a default straight into that all drive setting so you can go back to two wheel drive if you're an experienced tow-er and you're happy to do that, back into high-range two wheel drive.
But if you're new to towing I would just leave it in that all-wheel drive setting because it engages the front wheels it'll give you maximum traction where you need it.

One of the fantastic things about the towing mode, that you get, is that it actually gives you more engine braking so you've got a little system there and it you plug in the details of what you're towing overall length, overall width and it will actually increase engine braking so drop back a gear when you need it when you're travelling downhill, if it senses you're going a bit too fast it'll pull back down a gear and there's 10, 10 gears, that's a 10-speed Auto in this in this new Amarok.
And the other thing it does it actually gives you um a little bit more in the torque and power department by holding the gear a bit longer when you're travelling up hills, but when it comes to braking that engine braking factor is a really big plus.

One thing that I absolutely love about this is that it comes with an electric brake controller built-in standard, so the fact that it's got that and the tech that's in this new Amarok, it actually comes up on the dash so I've got a plus and a minus so I can adjust the gain, the amount of brake pressure that I'm putting back through into the boat. So I've got my big boat hooked up here at the moment and I can adjust that braking pressure so easily and actually see on the dash where it's at so it's not just a guess on a dial, it actually shows me while I'm driving along.

On the towing setup I can actually change the breaking mode, from low medium or high so I've got a heavier weight and this has got a 3 1/2 ton towing capacity I can maybe go to that high setting if I was just if I was just towing maybe a box trailer that was 500 kilos I could stay in a lower setting and somewhere in between might be medium.

So just to finish off think about those braking distances, so your standard distance that you'd stay behind a car travelling at 100 km an hour, I would double that when I'm towing and if the conditions are really poor and wet slippery conditions snowy, icy conditions even, you want to go further double that even again.

So big thing is to stay safe this is a fantastic tow vehicle it's got all the safety features, but you've got to help yourself out a little bit, use upstairs, think about the fact that it's going to take you a fair bit longer to slow down so you've got the weight of this vehicle the weight of what you're telling whether it be a big caravan or a big boat like this so, physics is pretty simple you've got inertia moving forward and it does take a bit longer when you've got that car go behind you and you can cover that off by increasing your braking distance.