Well perhaps it always has strange handling being a pickup truck.....

We have an L200 - I have driven it about 40000 miles. At the weekend I was driving to York in the rain and coming off a large roundabout there was a strong 'snatch' of the front left wheel which unsettle me a little, but there was a large puddle and I thought it was just that (although it isn't general affected by puddles). No problem for the rest of the journey there, until 30 miles into the return journey when the same thing happened but much more violently and I almost lost the car, as the front end dipped violently to the right and the back end broke away to about 30 degrees to direction of travel. Luckily there was no one in the right hand lane next to me or I would have taken them out. The feeling was just like the front left brake had applied full emergency braking and there was even a sound like the ABS intervening. I was not braking at the time, just normal speed out of a roundabout on a dual carriageway with a light throttle. Drove the last 30 miles home at 40mph as I was so worried.
It has been to the main dealer who can find nothing wrong. The car had nothing in the boot, wasn't towing, just 2 of us in the front and I drive it 12-15000 miles a year so I know what it normally handles like and I wasn't pushing it anywhere near its limit.
Could this be a traction control malfunction? - Water in a sensor or something that would make the traction control think there was some sort of issue so it applied strong braking? In this situation there would be no diagnostic errors as the system thinks it has worked correctly.

Any ideas?

IIRC there was an issue with terminal rot in the rear chassis rails causing the suspension to come away on the L200 but that should have been noticed by the main stealer. I'm not sure how it would affect the handling though.

Thanks for that,
The vehicle is only 3 years old, so hopefully not rot. I would have thought that sort of issue would be felt on every turn where this was twice on 150miles of driving.
It might be who adding that it was in 2WD mode at the time = RWD.
Thanks
Hugh

sounds scary

Only thing can think off is maybe one or more of the ABS rings is loose, I had this on my volvo and it made the ABS go crazy though I did get a warning light sometimes but not always. When it happened like you describe it was like the brakes were snatching or it just shook and also happened mostly on roundabouts. I was cheapskate and glued the rings on with epoxy... fixed it though

I would get in direct touch with the manufacturer, they can dig deeper into the ecu which has memory storage of events and sensor data.
A friend and neighbour who is one of Fords technical elite explained the data he could retrieve when he gave evidence in court over a fatal crash, it was a lot of very deep detail.

I work with someone who is ex Mitsubishi technical dept, he said there are no known abs/ebs/tc software issues with that model/year, you should be under the 5 year warranty so a good dealer should be able to deal with it and liase with the tech dept where necessary.

They should have checked the basics ie; tyre sizes/make matching, wheel speed sensor signals, yaw/g sensor signals, pedal position sensors etc.

If you're stuck i may be able to find a good dealer near you (as in recommended by the tech dept).

Dave

I had snatching like that on the front of my Hilux when the bottom ball joint was a hair away from failing. Didn't show up on the MOT and didn't show up when lifted on jacks, but the day after the MOT the passenger front wheel detached from the car at 15mph under gentle acceleration. No snatching since I rebuilt all front joints.

That said, yours does sound more aggressive to me - and the sound like the ABS was kicking in is interesting. My understanding of ABS systems suggests that shorts or opens are both treated as failed sensors and ignored, but activation of the system due to maybe a dodgy yaw sensor is a possibility?

[Edited on 20/8/20 by coyoteboy]

Thanks everyone.
I will pass all suggestions on to the dealer who is having another look at it. Not one of those things I want to experience again.

Regards
Hugh

Had this before (twice) both times it was the bottom ball joint. Although different vehicles (Escort, Mazda) the effect was the same. The Mazda took a while to figure out as the ball joint was OK but the tapered hole had been enlarged.