What does the sport mode function do...

[stugray]

Originally Posted by N234

I dug myself and my Subie out of 20cm of snow this morning. I turned tcs of by holding the button down.

After a while, i noticed the tsc indicator blinking, but I'm not certain if it kicked back in, as i was still allowed to spin my tires.

What I experienced was:

Just above freezing outside, about 3 inches of new snow (slushy).
Disabled VSC & TC with the long press, both lights lit on dash.
Took the car out in the neighborhood, and did brake checks and had lots of traction.

Pulled out of the neighborhood onto the 2 lane hiway and as I merge into traffic from the merge lane I give it a bit of gas and I feel the ass end slip just a bit.
So (knowing better) I dont lift abruptly because I dont want to induce snap-in oversteer.
As I lift gradually, the rear is recovering when WHAT??
THE TCS lights blink and I feel the car apply brakes to stop what it thinks is a slide.
And it does exactly what I was trying to avoid: Snap-in oversteer to braking which spun me the opposte direction 180 degrees into oncoming traffic.
I saw the VSC lights blinking furiously as this happened.

The oncoming car missed me by a couple of inches on the shoulder as I stopped pointing in the exact opposite direction in his lane.

So "disabled" is not "disabled by my standards"....

[gravitylover]

As I discovered today, what you should have done is keep your foot in it and give it just a little bit more. The car will cut throttle, brake, add throttle and brake again until it has righted itself but will track nearly straight (or at least where you are steering) the whole time. If you lift the front brakes grab and the ass end comes around. Sure it's safer but it really does put the kibosh on sliding around for fun.

[PWBRZ]

Originally Posted by stugray

What I experienced was:

Just above freezing outside, about 3 inches of new snow (slushy).
Disabled VSC & TC with the long press, both lights lit on dash.
Took the car out in the neighborhood, and did brake checks and had lots of traction.

Pulled out of the neighborhood onto the 2 lane hiway and as I merge into traffic from the merge lane I give it a bit of gas and I feel the ass end slip just a bit.
So (knowing better) I dont lift abruptly because I dont want to induce snap-in oversteer.
As I lift gradually, the rear is recovering when WHAT??
THE TCS lights blink and I feel the car apply brakes to stop what it thinks is a slide.
And it does exactly what I was trying to avoid: Snap-in oversteer to braking which spun me the opposte direction 180 degrees into oncoming traffic.
I saw the VSC lights blinking furiously as this happened.

The oncoming car missed me by a couple of inches on the shoulder as I stopped pointing in the exact opposite direction in his lane.

So "disabled" is not "disabled by my standards"....

Holy Hoofcakes -- Sounds like the dreaded 'Auto LSD' function kicking in.

[stugray]

Originally Posted by gravitylover

As I discovered today, what you should have done is keep your foot in it and give it just a little bit more. The car will cut throttle, brake, add throttle and brake again until it has righted itself but will track nearly straight (or at least where you are steering) the whole time. If you lift the front brakes grab and the ass end comes around. Sure it's safer but it really does put the kibosh on sliding around for fun.

I tried to do close to what you say "is keep your foot in it and give it just a little bit more".

I could not have given it a bit more or I would have spun with the ass end going out to the left.
So I lifted slowly to avoid snap in and the car had straightened out already when the TCS light came on and it spun with the ass going out to the right.
I never touched the brakes until the VSC induced spin to the right at which point I just mashed the brakes and let the ABS do the work from there.

I am convinced that the car applied brakes for the electronic diff feature when that is the very last thing an experienced driver would have done under the circumstances.

So now the question: If VSC and TC are disabled, is the electronic diff feature still active?

I REALLY wish that Toyota would release a technical explanation of how the system works.
It's only a matter of time before some accident occurs where there is proof that a lack of understanding of the system results in a lawsuit inducing accident.

Having such a complex system on a vehicle with little to NO explanation of how it works is irresponsible on Toyota's part.

In fact, we dont even know HOW tunes might affect the different ECUs in the vehicle.
Is it possible to modify a tune to where it interfere's/interacts with stability systems?
I dont think anyone knows....

[Eski]

Originally Posted by stugray

I tried to do close to what you say "is keep your foot in it and give it just a little bit more".

I could not have given it a bit more or I would have spun with the ass end going out to the left.
So I lifted slowly to avoid snap in and the car had straightened out already when the TCS light came on and it spun with the ass going out to the right.
I never touched the brakes until the VSC induced spin to the right at which point I just mashed the brakes and let the ABS do the work from there.

I am convinced that the car applied brakes for the electronic diff feature when that is the very last thing an experienced driver would have done under the circumstances.

So now the question: If VSC and TC are disabled, is the electronic diff feature still active?

I REALLY wish that Toyota would release a technical explanation of how the system works.
It's only a matter of time before some accident occurs where there is proof that a lack of understanding of the system results in a lawsuit inducing accident.

Having such a complex system on a vehicle with little to NO explanation of how it works is irresponsible on Toyota's part.

In fact, we dont even know HOW tunes might affect the different ECUs in the vehicle.
Is it possible to modify a tune to where it interfere's/interacts with stability systems?
I dont think anyone knows....

This is exactly what i was looking for when starting this post.

[gravitylover]

I tried to get the car to spin like you had happen to you this morning but it wasn't slick enough. My XV would always snap itself back in line as did my Volvo C30 when I kept my foot in it but it does seem to be quite different with RWD. I'll keep playing with it to see if I can get it to go and come up with some sort of solution and let y'all know what I come up with.

I do agree though that SubeeYota should give us a heads up on best practices.