Disabled the driving aids. Here are my impressions.

[Dezoris]

You cant buy a production car or even a low production sports car without driving aids and nannies. Lotus, Ferrari, Lambo, etc etc all have them. Its the ecu controlled age of cars.

Your best bet is a kart, Atom, or something like SRF or Radical SR3 if you want a more pure sports car or racing car these days. And there is a reason radicals and Atoms are a pain in the ass to insure and register.

You can disable the ABS but its nothing like a car without.

[Target70]

Originally Posted by Dezoris

You cant buy a production car or even a low production sports car without driving aids and nannies. Lotus, Ferrari, Lambo, etc etc all have them. Its the ecu controlled age of cars.

Your best bet is a kart, Atom, or something like SRF or Radical SR3 if you want a more pure sports car or racing car these days. And there is a reason radicals and Atoms are a pain in the ass to insure and register.

https://www.factoryfive.com/kits/gtm-supercar/
not sure if any nannies are carried over from corvette donor, but I was looking at the Factory Five GTM pretty hard for a while.. just too expensive and I have no shop or own tools do do it right. also not sure how usable for DD. But being that low, aerodynamic, and light, pared with the corvette gearing you should be able to manage 35~40 mpg.

[stugray]

I have a few comments about this:

1 - Many poeple on this thread talk about "My ABS did This, my ABS did that". I hope everyone knows that the Traction & stability control ALSO use the "ABS" system. If you accelerate too hard around a corner from a stop and begin to spin a wheel the TCS kicks in and uses the ABS to correct the wheel spin.
If you are in a long sweeper or or are trying to drift and the Stabilty control detects the car beginning to slip it will use the ABS to correct it.
I think some on here are using the term "ABS" too generally.

2 - I can think of one example where using a car that was "designed with nannies in mind" might not work too well with the nannies off...... Rear brake bias.
What is the rear brake bias if the ABS is disabled? I have no idea, but if it is not correct (designed with nannies OFF in mind) then it will not be right with them off.

3 - The second day I had my car my ABS saved my ass.
I just pulled out into fast moving traffic and the onboard phone rang for the first time ever & scared the crap out of me and I knocked the hot coffee in the Stupid center console over (Second day with car remember).
When I looked up from all of that distraction traffic had stopped in front of me. I stopped from ~35MPH to zero faster than any car I have ever driven in my life... about 1 foot from the car in front of me.
If ABS had been off, the second day with my new car would have been my last.

[humfrz]

Originally Posted by stugray

..............- The second day I had my car my ABS saved my ass.
I just pulled out into fast moving traffic and the onboard phone rang for the first time ever & scared the crap out of me and I knocked the hot coffee in the Stupid center console over (Second day with car remember).
When I looked up from all of that distraction traffic had stopped in front of me. I stopped from ~35MPH to zero faster than any car I have ever driven in my life... about 1 foot from the car in front of me.
If ABS had been off, the second day with my new car would have been my last.

Good story, that I'm sure many of us can identify with ....

humfrz

[phloozy]

This may be the stupidest thread I have read in a while. Grats you turned your ABS off.... Keep it to yourself all you are doing is putting other people in danger by trying to convince young uneducated drivers that this is something they should also do. Pretty immature for someone who seems to be old as fuck.

[schreddingasphalt]

I'm new to this forum but I can't believe some of the responses to the OP. You guys do know you bought a sports car right?

Geez give the guy a break. If you read enough you will find that people doing the "pedal dance" have had their cars go into ice mode and then ABS prevents all but very limited braking. It's known to happen on Corvettes and even GT03s. Which makes it sound like a great way to plow into another driver on the track.

Before ABS and Stability aids were around, good drivers survived just fine by using our skills to know when to ease up on the pedal. Are the electronic nannies infalible? Of course not. That said I think Sport mode is just fine for me in the canyons since I'm not sure where my skills end and the electronics begin- I'm pretty sure I don't want to find out. I also think the question about pulling the fuse disabling the electronic proportioning is probably a valid concern.

Anyway -thanks to the OP now when I take my car to the track I will know how to disable at least the most troubling electronic nannies.

Disclaimer: You youngsters should keep all the systems on while on the road and probably at the track too

(joking)

[Target70]

Originally Posted by stugray

I have a few comments about this:

1 - Many poeple on this thread talk about "My ABS did This, my ABS did that". I hope everyone knows that the Traction & stability control ALSO use the "ABS" system. If you accelerate too hard around a corner from a stop and begin to spin a wheel the TCS kicks in and uses the ABS to correct the wheel spin.
If you are in a long sweeper or or are trying to drift and the Stabilty control detects the car beginning to slip it will use the ABS to correct it.
I think some on here are using the term "ABS" too generally.

...

I could be mistaken, but I believe OP was saying after you turn off the stability, and traction, via button or the pedal dance, you still have the ABS doing things for the stability and and traction control. For the most part, everyone here seems fine with ABS as what you would normally consider ABS. Which is, when you slam on the brakes in a panic, each tire will slow down to the point it starts to skid then the brakes will ease up to regain traction. This is great as it slows you down much faster than sliding, plus has the added advantage of maintaining traction on the front tires so you have the ability to steer out of the way which you can not do in a skid(under-steer). I believe everyone is fine with that.

The OP upgraded his brakes, I have no Idea what this would do to the stock settings for the ABS. It is possible that it is modulating the brakes (letting off then reapplying) before there is a danger of loosing traction. By doing this, you will actually loose breaking performance, and increase the stopping distance. The OP believes this to be the case, and has said he can stop quicker without the ABS interfering on his modified brakes. This you can choose to believe or not. But the topic does not seem to be primarily about this function of the ABS. schreddingasphalt above has mentioned Ice braking, someone else has mentioned electronic LSD, I earlier mentioned panic braking, and as of yet we do not know what other "features" the ABS has. for some examples check here: http://www.scion.com/cars/FR-S/safety/ some of these can be turned off with the pedal dance, like the brake assist. you lightly press the brake pedal too quickly in order to transfer weight, and the car decides to slam full on the brakes. Imagine the wrecks this could cause in the wrong situation. Or the opposite situation which schreddingasphalt mentioned, Ice braking. You can't brake hard on Ice or you skid, so in the middle of a corner a tire skips over a bump and causes this to kick in, which means you slam completely on the brakes and it only applies a fraction of the brakes thinking you are on ice, hitting a wall full speed is bad enough, but hitting it while on the brakes and the car deciding you don't really want to brake ramps it up to 11. THESE are the issues that a lot of people are concerned with, and the only way we currently know how to remove them from the car is to disable ABS as a whole. This still does not remove other issues such as engine cut, but it is a step in the direction of being able to anticipate what the car will do in any given situation.

[Tgionet]

Originally Posted by Target70

I live in Georgia, so no snow. After having the FRS for 2 days I "lost control" twice with all aids on, because the aids were on. A simple throttle blip around a corner on a deserted 4 lane at night in the rain, resulted in ABS locking up one of my front tires and stopping me in the middle of the street. the other time I ended up in the oncoming lane. (rain/night/no traffic). The reason is simple I didn't know how to react. Unless you are a/the programmer or have a lot of experience with it, you don't know what/when/how the nannies will do to the car. It is hard to stay in control of a car, when the ECU adjusts your input signals, plus adds some of it's own, as in increasing breaking force for "panic breaking" so now under the right conditions (chances are you won't know what they are till they happen) your brake travel/stopping ratio will change.

This. So many times over, this.

[SigmaHyperion]

This is great as it slows you down much faster than sliding

This is actually a fallacy that's been repeated in this thread numerous times.

ABS will, on average actually increase your stopping distance. In some particular circumstances (namely very wet conditions) ABS MAY slow you down a little bit faster/shorter, but in almost all situations it does not decrease braking distance at all, and in many situations it actually increases, sometimes significantly, your distance to stop.

Despite what most people believe ABS is not at all designed at all to slow you down faster. It is designed solely to help you maintain control of the vehicle while under maximum braking force.

If you slam on your brakes, and you simply hold the wheel and hope for the best like almost all people do, and you manage to not hit the car in front of you -- in almost all cases ABS had NOTHING to do with saving you. You would have stopped in about the same distance if the car didn't have ABS -- and in just about every case except wet roads, you likely would have actually stopped in a shorter distance without it.

Now, if you slammed on your brakes too late to stop, and swerved to avoid the guy in front of you and succeeded -- that you can thank ABS for. As, almost guaranteed, if you had slammed on your brakes without ABS you'd have ended up slamming into the guy in front of you because you have virtually zero control over steering with locked brakes.

Interestingly enough, the NHTSA, AAA, and the IIHS have all concluded that ABS actually makes cars SIGNIFICANTLY less safe. Why? Not that there's something wrong with ABS -- it's great when used for what it's designed for. But because, as indicated in this very thread even amongst fairly educated consumers, there is the belief that ABS shortens stopping distances when it in fact does anything but that. As a result, when vehicles are equipped with ABS, people actually began to reduce their following distance with other vehicles thinking they were safe to do so because "they've got ABS" and, predictably, now have significantly more accidents than they were having before. Also, the ability to swerve off the road at speed (rather than plowing in a straight line) increases the likelihood of rollovers and hitting immovable objects -- sometimes it's actually safer to just ride it out and let the two vehicles that are designed to absorb an impact just absorb the impact. And, since most people just slam on the brakes and ride it out anyways, they're not getting any benefit from ABS while getting a perceived increase in their safety that's, at least subconsciously, making them act in a less-safe manner.

I live in Georgia, so no snow. After having the FRS for 2 days I "lost control" twice with all aids on, because the aids were on. A simple throttle blip around a corner on a deserted 4 lane at night in the rain, resulted in ABS locking up one of my front tires and stopping me in the middle of the street. the other time I ended up in the oncoming lane. (rain/night/no traffic). The reason is simple I didn't know how to react.

I agree with your overall point -- and precisely why I take every new vehicle I purchase to empty parking lots or other deserted areas to get a feel for where the 'nannies' kick-in on that particular vehicle.

But, in regards to your specific situation -- It's hard to say of course without having experienced it, but that really sounds like a real problem that I would be taking up with Scion to me. By definition, ABS will not "lock up" a tire -- it is anti-lock. Nor should the situation you describe make any other system (TCS/DSC/etc) engage a single front brake automatically -- and NONE should "lock" anything up for exactly the reason you describe, least of all a single side of the steerable axle which is incredibly dangerous. That sounds like a flat-out malfunction to me. Those "nannies" are designed specifically to keep people from accidentally doing the exact situation that you describe (spinning out in the middle of traffic) -- if one of them did it on its own, that's a significant safety issue, and I cannot think of any legitimate reason why that would be acting as intended.

[stugray]

SigmaHyperion

I dont know what you are smoking but I completely disagree with almost everything you said above.
Please post some references to these "conclusions" made by the NHTSB, etc.

My experience with ABS has been the opposite of what you attempt to explain above.

For high performance driving, I agree disabling ABS is good, for everyday driving ABS is MUCH safer - In my experience. (30 years driving with & without ABS)

The ONLY time I have experienced ABS taking longer to stop is on gravel.

[irucremmi]

Technology has replaced our own abilities too much. Think wally movie, that's where it's going...

[ericmpena]

To me it's like drinking and driving. If you want to do it then fine, no one is going to care if you die from your own mistakes, but the bigger concern is are you okay with hurting or killing someone else because of your decisions?

If you were alone on public roads then by all means do what you want, but when there are families, elderly drivers, and young inexperienced drivers on the roads today...you should think twice before pulling out that fuse. Like people have already posted: Do it on the track. The public roads are not yours and you don't have the right to make decisions that could affect someone else's life.

Be safe out there.

[SigmaHyperion]

Originally Posted by stugray

SigmaHyperion

I dont know what you are smoking but I completely disagree with almost everything you said above.
Please post some references to these "conclusions" made by the NHTSB, etc.

NHTSA paper entitled "“Preliminary Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Antilock Brake Systems for Passenger Cars" results were, quote, "All types of run-off-road crashes – rollovers, side impacts with fixed objects and frontal impacts with fixed objects – increased significantly with ABS. "

NHTSA concluded that "“Rollovers and side impacts with fixed objects… had the highest increases with ABS. Nonfatal crashes increased by 28 percent, and fatal crashes by 40 percent.”

NHTSA continues to re-affirm that ABS only reduces braking distance in, quote, "some particular instances".

NHTSA's own website states "ABS is designed to help the driver maintain control of the vehicle during emergency braking situations, not make the car stop more quickly."

For those in Canada, on their version of the NHTSA's website, in the FAQ on whether ABS stops a vehicle in a shorter distance they emphatically, [b]in bold[/i] state "NO!"

IIHS released an article entitled "Antilock Brakes Don’t Reduce Fatal Crashes; People in Cars With Antilocks at Greater Risks- But Unclear Why.”

General Motors R&D concluded "“it is unlikely that on dry roads ABS can materially reduce risk"

The Society of Automotive Enginers concluded "ABS was found to be associated with a 51 percent increase in fatal rollover crashes on dry roads. For fatal side impact crashes, ABS produced a 69 percent increase for unfavorable road conditions, and a 61 percent increase for favorable road conditions.”

[ericmpena]

I imagine when you lose control because your fuse is pulled it would feel something like this.
[ame]http://youtu.be/7Ym9yPWzJgE[/ame]