sliding around in the snow, burning smell...
 

Hi all, so we got a few inches of fresh snow, and I was hooning around in an empty parking lot, (general altimaxes are great!) nothing crazy, just some sliding around, (car is AT, TC and VSC were fully off the whole time, TC button pressed 5 secs) RPMs never seemed to go above 2-3K, maybe tops 4K once or twice, and speed was 10-15 MPH tops, that's all it takes to break traction and slide a bit, but even at these low speeds it was still so much fun slipping and sliding around, god way too much fun really :D Did this for about 10 mins or so and then noticed a kind of burning smell when I got outside (faint smell, not very strong, I guess like burnt oil). Am a total noob with cars, (don't change oil even) so any ideas what this could be? brakes? diff? anything to be worried about? thanks in advance?

Brakes, since you did not fully disengage electronic controls.

Check your rear rotors, probably a bit of overheating on them.

-alex

Are you referring to the "pedal dance"?

Thanks will check rotors next time, but with TC and VSC fully off (TC pressed 5 sec) isn't that fully disengaged? (I edited and added that bit of info to the post a few min after the original post, so apologies if you didn't read that)

IIRC, even after you hold down the button for 5 seconds, the car still has some electronic aids activated, more specifically the brake assist. So perhaps during your hooning, the car was still "aiding" you.

The "Pedal Dance" is a method of fully defeating the cars electronic aids.

Thanks iag48st, found the thread you are talking about and am reading it - http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25494

I smelled the exact same thing when I tried the car on black ice.
I did not disable any nannies because I wanted to know how the car behaved "worst case". It was awful.
When I got out, I smelled the "burning smell" as well.

With all of the nannies off, you will still have electronic brake force distribution active. Even the pedal dance is believed to keep this enabled as it is part of the ABS.

The only way to completely get rid of that is to pull the ABS fuse.

Where's the video?! :P

It's the traction control going ape-shit. Mine did the same last night as well. even with the "nannies" off, the traction light flicks on at low-speed loss of traction

I did read your original post and understand you held the button down. TC is still "vaguely on" and since you didn't rev over 4K (whether by choice or by conditions), there was no way for you to truly know if the throttle was cut off or not.

As already mentioned, "pedal dance" aka diagnostics mode is the only way to turn it off without TC coming back on. Or pull ABS. Pedal dance is easier.

It's the same thing as holding down the brakes lightly as you do a burnout. By applying brakes and power at the same time, you'll cook stock pads in no time. The only reason why you don't smell the pads more when doing burnouts is because you're mostly just overwhelmed by tire smoke.

-alex

It's your tires. It would have been quite obvious if you had your brakes going on, it's a loud GRRR GRRR from the ABS modulator, and on snow, you would have heard it. I spin in the snow all the time and the TC rarely kicks in on smooth drifts.

thanks, that explanation helps! :thumbsup:

Yes, I've heard that loud GRRR when testing stopping distance on snow by hard braking in a straight line and there was definitely none of that in this case (it's loud, can't miss it). so i guess it could be tires, they do spin a bit when slipping ;)

As long as it's brakes and/or tires that's fine by me, I was hoping it's not the diff or something more serious.

Snow days are fun days with this car LOL :D

it's definitely not completely off.. i e-braked the car (on a hardpacked snow road) after doing the 5sec method the other day and heard the ABS pump kick in when i didn't have my foot on the brake..


me and t/c have completely different idea's of being in control, so i think one of my next mods is going to be adding a switch to the ABS fuse...