Ice: Making every day joe a pro drifter since the Ford model T.
 

So it snowed and iced up overnight here in the beautiful sun city, quickly learned this morning that our car sucks with stock tires on ice, traction control or not, even starting in 2nd on level pavement the car had issues, makes me nervous about driving her up to Ohio....

nothing on the ground here in central tx yet...im not looking forward to driving with others on the road when/if it does...:shakes head:

Traction control doesn't mean what I think you think it means.

Those tires will be like hockey pucks. Go get some winter tires, or a 2nd car.

they're called summer tires for a reason...lol

Eh, not worth the money in Texas, snow is rare but just be careful. I borrowed the parents SUV this morning since it started snowing when I left.

:iagree: on the winter tires...

:ohsnap1: on the snow :eek:

Youre probably getting ready to get the shyt we just got, it snowed 8 inches here, and yes i know "summer" tires wont do well on ice, i'm from Ohio, I know these things. And i'm full aware of what traction control does, but it DOES aid when the back end slides out, and I could see it was attempting to do something. No point in buying another winter car or tires, it snows maybe one or two days here, and clear the rest of the year.

Even without snow, summer tires loose major traction when the tempreture drops.

Get winter tires or at the least a good set of All-Weather ones if you want to drive in cold weather.

Actually our traction control does nothing for yaw control. Unlike Honda's VSA which can control any brake on the vehicle to prevent a spin or a slide, our VDC just cuts throttle, if IIRC.

No, it controls yaw as well. It can sense both understeer and oversteer. However if there is no traction to be had on any wheel there isn't much it can do, but it does try!

Yes, it just cuts power. I think it is a crappy system, and gives people a false sense of security. In my opinion, it is more dangerous than nothing at all.

It will stop minor slides before they start. It will make major slides worse by robbing you of the ability to control it.

I turn it off.

I read in the manual that it only cuts throttle, where did you see it controls yaw as well?

Empirical testing. It cuts power in the case of oversteer but I've also found that in some cases it will pulse the brakes. I believe it will only pulse the brakes when your foot is on the brake pedal. You can be going all kinds of sideways, hit the brakes and the car will straighten itself out, even with VDC turned off. So while not quite the yaw control of other systems, it does take the current yaw into consideration when braking and can pulse each wheel individually.

Yea I tracked the car in monsoon like rain on a cold day and I will tell you even 4th gear will get you completely sideways on the straight away! The TC will cut the power keeping the wheels from spinning from too much torque but it also kicks in when it feels a sideways slide... I.E. on the track it would apply the brakes when I got the car to 4 wheel drift and try to straighten me out :( so I cut it off and wow I never knew how hard keeping traction in the rain was in this car!!! so I have learned if you need throttle response in a drift or in poor conditions you better turn it off and know what your doing too! a little throttle goes a LONG way!

I think you might be referring to the the "nervous" ABS system that some people talk about, but I do see what you mean.

The drifters don't like it because the ABS system always wants to try and straighten you out (i.e. reduce your yaw angle).

The nervousness comes from the system's eagerness towards rear bias in straight line braking. If you go too quickly from full acceleration to full brake before the weight has transferred back to the front axle it will get a little sketchy for a moment as it can't apply enough front brake to make itself happy. I think this mainly stems from the feature they call "Brake Assist", which is were you hit the brakes suddenly but not enough to trigger ABS, and it decides that you really intended to brake at full ABS threshold and so increases the brake pressure to maximum until you back off the pedal.

Good explantion Chris! :tup:

I find it funny that you got hit with snow before us...lol

Especially since I am in Houston, but it was a very weird set of events. We had moisture from the Gulf of Mexico last night and that cold front the west which allowed us to have early snow.

This is El Paso, TX, IT NEVER SNOWS HERE, EVER!!

http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/i...32c9ad2301.jpg

Poor Roxy
http://c1.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/i...00618f9868.jpg

http://c4.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/i...a64e7c67cf.jpg

http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/i...fb450dfbc1.jpg

Is that Fort Bliss?

Yes sir, good ol' Ft. Bliss, those are actually trainee barracks where our soldiers live.

Yea I was there last year for mobilization. But we got stuck in Mcgregor -_- God I hate that place.

Mcgregor sucks, I actually like the city/post here, although the altitude does rob my Z quite a bit.

Yea it's not a bad post just have to resist the temptation to go into Juares LOL!

no way man, theres a drug war goin on down there now, over 3,000 dead motherfukkers so far this year, screw that.