I've been driving my Ford Escape hybrid 2009 (4WD) for a while so far and I really still enjoy riding that vehicle .... During the past month I visited Rum Valley (Jordan) many times , and this valley is a real desert with deep dry sand , my Ford 4 wheel drive performance was amazing , and wheels never spines , but I noticed though that it reaches a limit where I loose engine power completely , like if I try to drive a very deep sand , and I push on gas pedal to the end but the engine stops responding and its like if the car is telling me that it can not go further on this sand - way (but what can I see that its possible to go further ) ,,, the question is how to go further to the maximum limits ... Any ideas on this part guys ....

 

Possible your traction control is kicking in.

GaryG

 

After checking car manual , I found that GaryG comment is correct : its the traction control system that prevents wheels to spin by reducing engine power , this can be disabled by Turing off the RSS switch on Escape 2009 models and later ..

 

Some Escapes have a system that was used to detect overheating of the AWD rear drive clutch and would actually disable it fully if it overheated. That would leave you with front drive only making it highly probable that wheelspin would result each and every time you give it gas and you gte TC activation.

But thee should be an icon lit up advising you of same.

 

Hope that helps.