Easier driving with trac - off?
 

I've been wanting to ask this question for awhile, does anybody find the car drives smoother and easier for takeoffs when TRAC is off? At stoplights I often turn TRAC OFF to setting 1 (1-second press) because I believe it's easier driving without it.

When traction control is on, I often feel like the clutch is pushing back at me and the car doesn't want to move as easily, whereas having TRAC off is smoother. What could this be? The car perhaps sensing me slipping the clutch a little bit (low rpm) and trying to prevent wheel spin?

It's definitely not the clutch, it has to do with the rear end slightly. Its more obvious when starting out from a corner. Being limited slip it will allow one tire to slightly slip while cornering from a dead stop allowing you to put power to the ground. The wheel speed/abs sensors see this, think you are losing traction but in all reality it's just the LSD doing it's job. Then you get a power cut because the ECU thinks you are going to lose control, and incidentally you piss off oncoming traffic because you pulled out in your sports car and it bogged down a little.

From a straight line it's probably you just losing traction, even ever so slightly. It's very very easy for the stock tires to slip. Hell I have 235's on 9 inch wide wheels and mine slip easily. I hold the button for 5 seconds every start up. I'll control my wheel spin with my right foot thank you very much...

The clutch "pushing back at you" feeling is probably the throttle body being electronically closed and opened rapidly to "help you gain traction" which makes the car feel slightly weird. The clutch in this car is just that, a basic clutch. You control it 100%, no nanny's on it.

I just leave mine in sport mode all the time, it's fine.

Maybe learn to drive a manual more better?

I don't have a problem w/ everything on. I thought the light blinks in the cluster if it's activated? I've never had it blink at me unless I'm purposely pushing it (read: not normal driving).

I have trouble smoothly launching from non-motion. I'll have to try this out when I get my car back from the shop.

"Easier". Kind of a broad question. It is my prefernce to have everything off at lower speeds. Im not going to fuck around on a highway going 75mph without traction control.

Yes, I've noticed the car is a lot more controllable without TC/VSC. Have not noticed it in a straight line but in the corners the stability control intervenes way too early.

For safety, I leave it in sport mode when I am driving on public roads.

I really need to make a macro to type this for me because I do it so often:

IF the nannies on this car are interfering with your "driving style" on the street - Then you are overdriving the car. (translation - you drive like an ass-hat).

I drive with he systems on at all times and I have only noticed 2-3 times in over a year where the TC/VSC intervened when I though it should not have.

Look at it this way: In older cars without TC systems - WHEN do you know that you should not have made that left turn with so much throttle?
WHEN YOU SPUN OUT IN THE INTERSECTION.
How many times did you need to spin out in the intersection before you learned to not do that? - ONCE!

Now that the nannies keep stepping in and "saving us" how do we learn to quit pushing the car? - WE DONT, we just keep doing it.

So learn to drive the car by paying attention to the nannies.
If they stepped in to do something, chances are you were pushing it too hard.

So I think this car it teaching kids bad habits by not punishing them for bad behavior.

So on that note: Most new student drivers SHOULD practice without the nannies a lot, but NOT ON THE STREET.

lulz at not being able to catch the rear end on a 200hp car.

rear end steps out while turning right onto a busy street at 10 MPH - piece of cake.
rear end steps out at 65 MPH on a deceasing radius off camber right hand turn - not so much.

You need enough power to lose traction. Once traction is lost 200bhp or 2000bhp doesn't actually matter that much it's all about your ability to control the chassis.

Look at it another way:
I had my car all day long on the track for a HPDE.
My teenage son & I shared sessions with a professional driving instructor.

I never turned off ANY of the systems
Yet - we still drove the crap out of the car and had a ton of fun doing it.
learned more than a year's worth of driving on the street under any circumstances.
rarely engaged the systems

And under the small number of cases where it DID step in, it saved us from a spin that would have meant a stop in the hot pit for a tech inspect..

So - Anyone who says that they drive conservatively on the street and keep getting stepped on by the nannies should get their system checked out.

Please don't drive with traction control OFF, you will end up fucking up your car, spin out, and possibly endanger others and yourself on public roads. Learn to get used to your clutch and work on being smooth. You should ONLY be driving with traction control OFF on track.

The nannies are constantly going on any modern car dealing out the tiniest hint of under or over steer. This corrupts the throttle response & it is noticeable. Like in most cars turn off traction control &/or stability control and you find the car more responsive. You'll also find the car starts to properly understeer & oversteer.

The guy I use for car control training has a corner which has been specifically built for teaching you about nanny intervention. Go through the corner at a constant speed & neutral throttle so there's a bit of tension in the chassis. Any car with stability & traction control will keep a nice neutral line at 30-40mph, no indication on the dash anything is happening. Turn the nannies off & unless you're really good you'll spin at same speed. FWD, AWD, RWD it doesn't matter, you'll spin. The first time driver response is almost always like WTF?!

this thread is not helping the community

So what does that say about someone who would post a useless post in a useless thread?

Even when you press the buttons so TC/VSC is "off" it's not turned completely off. Unless the "pedal dance" or the correct fuse is taken out, you're still being nannied just a bit. If you are about to spin out the computer will still intervene (from what I've read online through various forums discussions).

Good for you.

You've never had a little fun on an empty backroad? A highway offramp? Driven over the speed limit?

Trust me I know plenty about car control. No TC/ABS/VSC......anything except ME! It's a shock I didn't die!

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...c/IMG_8568.jpg

Couldn't find any pics, but I used to go to the track on this as well.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...ps5745ca30.jpg

Someone will have to confirm this. I'd always been led to believe that the twins were one of the few modern vehicles that actually did allow you to entirely shut off those systems (holding the TCS button for 3 seconds.)

It's not the TSC button but rather the "pedal dance" (posted somewhere on the forum)...sequence of pedal presses and button presses

Here's a good thread - The "Pedal Dance" testing

I'm going to disagree with this:

As soon as I leave my apartment to go anywhere there's a stop sign and a 90 degree right turn onto the high street. A lot of the time it is very greasy there, with some small loose rocks. If I pull out from the stop normally, with nanny's the car bogs down A LOT, it almost feels as if it is stalling. Pull out in the same manner without nanny's, the inside rear wheel noticeably kicks because of the greasyness/rocks. This isn't driving too hard, it's normal driving. Now because that wheel is kicking it's allowing the outside rear tire to spin at it's intended speed with traction giving me traction to perform the turn - If the car was open diff with traction control I'm willing to bet that if I made that corner with nanny's on, I wouldn't get intervention. It's the nature of the LSD.

I dare anyone to go into a large open space area/parking lot with loose gravel, the traction completely off and make a tight turn driving normally. You're going to hear the LSD want to spin both wheels at the same speed, with the inside wheel slipping slightly. Traction on and you'll be getting cut throttle.

Driving with nanny's on at the track it going to harm your lap times. Period. Pushing the car with the nanny's is not going to teach you anything about controlling the vehicle, in fact it's going to make you rely on them to make sure you don't lose the car. They intervene before the car noticeably is going to lose control. And with that being said this car is very easy to control. That's the bases to how it was built. Fun, lightweight FR layout, easy to kick the rear out, and easy to control when it does step out. I'm not saying it's better to drive with or without nanny's. If you know how to handle a car: your car, you might just be better off without them for low speed maneuvers.

And that pedal dance statement is wrong. I can do donuts all day long with just the 5 second button hold and no traction control ever interrupts me. Do I do it? No. Now with just the traction button held for 5 seconds, if the ECU deems the car to be operating without control (ie big bump and a wheel lifts, or left foot braking) it will turn the nanny's back on. But between turning it off, and not controlling the car to the point the ECU turns the traction back on you will not have traction interference. The pedal dances main function eliminates electronic brake force distribution, and the "panic brake" function - which is a function that monitors how much the pedal is depressed, if it is pushed but so far it will apply as much force to the brakes as it can to get you to a stop as quickly as possible, as it thinks you are panic braking to come to a stop quickly. Technically it's a diagnostic mode. The pedal dance should only be used at the track by people who know what they are doing.

info here:
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...89&postcount=1

Yea but seasoned drivers noticed that is still is getting involved so the only way to fully disable it along with pretty much everything except ABS is to do the pedal dance

How did I survive 25+ years of driving without nannies???

Hmm...well I did have 175 HP, but it was in a Dodge Dakota pickup (heavy). Had a lightweight sedan, but it only had 110 HP.

I think I'm glad I have the nannies on this car...

I just use sport mode for my road driving. The default setting can get annoying on CA roads: they're horribly surfaced and can trigger the default TC program during very normal driving. Sport mode gives plenty of room for even spirited road driving. Occasionally if I'm pushing very hard (for the street), I'll get the blinking light for a second, but the car doesn't feel like it's actually intervening. On very rare occasions, I'll push the car hard enough that the light will blink and I can feel the throttle being manipulated, or a momentary pulse of one wheel's brake, but in my experience it's very rare for that to happen unexpectedly.

I've never driven the car in snow, but I'd venture a guess that I'd want to do low-speed snow driving with the computers off. In my experience, computers can easily get confused and/or overly meddlesome in the snow. Sometimes going a bit sideways is just the best way to do something in the snow without slowing to obscenely slow speeds. It's OK, computer. We're doing 15mph here. Go have a hot cocoa and take the rest of the day off: I've got this.

Fitter, happier...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...r.albumart.jpg

If you disable the systems, they CAN re-enable themselves and step in and intervene.
I know there is also an Ice mode that has been debated if it gets inhibited with TC/VSC off.

I have personally experienced the car do the exact wrong thing under the circumstances while "disabled".

I think that it waited longer than usual to intervene, but I had already recovered when it killed the throttle and I snap-in-oversteered into a spin.
On ice with the primacy's - Never again. Just got my new winter hankooks just a few hours ago :burnrubber:

I drive bareback when I'm on roads I know, at (mostly) reasonable speeds in warm dry conditions. However when I'm with a new road or doing something I know is stupid I throw a condom on. Common sense.

I'm on Michelin PSS and while they are awesome above 50 degrees its down to about 30 this week and they are hard as rocks, Traction control for me is a must to even keep rubber down. Its a very different driving experience.

This all comes down to personal preference. For me it depends on what I'm after, a safe commute in a downpour on cold roads. Or do I want to go out on a Saturday and leave rubber at a few stop lights?

I bought this car because of the balance, steering, RWD - basically just the "feel" which I love so much. I'm most likely never going to drive it fast enough to get into trouble, or show off and do anything stupid. And I get 33MPG on average, so I'm not dropping the clutch and making hot rod starts off the line. But even at that, just pulling out of my parking space at work while turning, and feeling the rumble and hesitation of the rear while the computer kicks in is annoying.

No offense, but one will never be able to properly learn how a car reacts once pushed past the limits because the nannies prevent it from even reaching the limit. You'll never know what the limits are until you've gone beyond it. I've autocrossed my stock BRZ enough times to know exactly how the car is going to react at the limit under normal autocrossing conditions. The twins are so easy to drive at 10/10s. Much easier than my old NC MX5 was to drive at 10/10s.

I'm all for nannies. I think they're great tools that may mitigate accidents under normal, everyday driving. However, they should be completely off(pedal danced) if one truly wishes to learn this car(under controlled conditions of course).

I really like the fact the twins allow full disengagement of all nannies with the pedal dance. Hard to find that in newer cars.

Just to be clear, the 5-second TC press will definitely allow you to spin. I've spun the car numerous times drifting on a wet skidpad.

The pedal dance only makes a difference in two scenarios from what I understand:

1) If you effectively lift a rear wheel under power (it will try to brake the free wheel).
2) Trail-braking using staggered pads.

For all other intents and purposes, the 5-second TC press is effectively like having the nannies full off. I just wanted to clarify that, as I don't want people to think an invisible hand will save them from spinning with the 5-second TC press.

I have had the TC/VSC turn back on in the snow when my ass stepped out just about 10 degrees. I knew better than lifting too abruptly so I was gathering it back up very carefully when the TC/VSC lights came on, and the throttle died. This caused a snap-in oversteer that spun me into oncoming traffic (the opposite direction of the original step out).
This was after holding the buttons for the 5-count and verifying lights came on.
So in some situations, you can do donuts, and other situations, it will intervene.

I wish we knew the real entry criteria for TC/VSC intervention.

Scary! I've heard of that happening, but only when the 5-second TC press was done with the car in motion. Were you fully stopped when you disabled it?

I can confirm this happens as I was in a very similar situation, but with rain. This happened with the trac control button held down for 5 seconds at a stop when starting the car. Trying to get on the freeway, I took the turn to get to the on ramp a bit too fast and the rear kicked out. I made the proper inputs and started recovering but the nannies kicked, cutting off the throttle, right before I straightened out and caused snap oversteer, making me spin. I'm just glad this happened late at night on a weekday with no one around.

That rumble you feel is not the nannies, it's the Torsen diff. Enjoy it because racecar! :D

I've done the same.

+2 I did it within the first week of driving it but not in a safe environment. A few spotty wet patches. Hadn't driven a RWD for 14 years. Really STUPID, and incredibly lucky.

Don't fuck around on the street. It WILL bite you.

So would the pedal dance have made a difference? Because then the throttle wouldn't have been cut off right?

No difference. Nannies were off per 5-second push. I got myself into a classic over-correction disaster. By the third swing I knew it was game over. Again - incredibly stupid.

I haven't experienced any throttle cuts on track when countersteering & recovering slides w/5 second TC off. If it had cut throttle, I'm pretty sure I would have known (i.e., the car would have spun).

I also don't remember any throttle cuts on the wet skidpad.

And that makes sense as the pedal dance should affect electronic brake force distribution (EBD).