Anyone use Traction control?
 

I was watching Top Gear last night, and they were testing a 650hp supercar. First portion of the test was w/ traction control on, the second half with the traction control off. When it was off, the car wasnt nearly as fast and drifted around the corners.
My question is that you see alot of autocross/roadracing cars on this site with 500+ hp. Does anyone use traction control? At what point is the horsepower overwhelming the car, and slowing you down?

I use it, it's my right foot. haha Most of us around here are power junkies aned really have to much power. Autocross is the only place where I feel it's a negative. I'm used to my cars power and can modulate the throttle pretty well. I raced my BMW 550i with the traction control on and off. I couldn't stand it with the traction control active. I personally like to feel the car and make my own inputs. That's racing for me. I rode with a guy and his Nissan GTR out at a local SCCA event. We got done and I told him he was a cheater. Traction control and ABS saved his butt at least a couple times. I ended up beating him by a couple seconds. :unibrow: To finally answer your question, 650hp is PLENTY. I have 666hp and gobs of torque and it's stressing the chassis to the max. I went from a big block making 593hp/587flb's to 666hp/641hp in the same chassis. I could mat the throttle in first gear before and it would dead hook on clean pavement. Now it will make smoke. LOL The same went for autocross. I really could put all the power down. Now I can easily spin the tires as the power comes on. I really think somewhere around 500rwhp is ideal and managable for these chassis. Although I will say that the extra power is nice for the road course.

Traction control is unnecessary with Toyo R888s 275/40/17s and 515 ft/lbs of torque in my experience. Thats on hotchkiss leafs as well. More computers and bells and whistles = less reliability on a track day.

But whatever floats your boat.

I totally want TC for performance and peace of mind.
But afaik the only options are RaceLogic (around $2k including sensors) or a Motec M800 (?) ECU ($4500 + sensors including all the rest of the FI stuff). This makes a little more sense as if you are buying an ECU you are spending $2k anyway.

And you still have to mount the sensors and figure out what to use for a trigger wheel.

I think if someone came up with a cheaper canned solution it would sell like crazy. Remember factory TC is usually way more intrusive than a race tuned system.

I don't understand why FAST and BIgStuff haven't incorporated it yet. I think a feature like that would be a HUGE selling point as the systems are so close in capabilities otherwise. And its not that far of a stretch, just read in 4 sensors and do a little math.

With the new GPIO, its certainly an option in MS, but no one has really stepped up to the plate with it yet. Its not something I have time to develop but once the GPIO is widely available and MSIII on line maybe it will come up.

Probably because just dipping a toe into the world of traction control adds a whole new level of issues that they are not set up to support....You are then forced to be involved in braking modules and all of the associated complexities, the brakes themselves, etc etc etc.

Davis Technologies has some interesting units that work a little different then some of the others. I have considered using them in the future, not for racing so much but with lots of torque on hand as a safety measure on the street. (Not street racing) I looked into it a while ago and I don't think they are any cheaper but they may be easier to install and have less to go wrong with them? I don't really have any first hand info but I'll throw it in here since you were asking. Here's a link to one of there videos.

http://www.moretraction.com/imagesmo..._16_10_v1.html

With respect to Davis Technologies traction control, you may also want to check out http://www.racetronics.net/Copy_2_of...e_Control.html.

Their site asserts that this sort of technology is bad on the engine, etc.

I cannot say that I've run either unit and would be very interested to hear feedback from someone who has.

Thoughts?

I would agree without even reading it that it is hard on an engine. The more your in traction control the worse it would be. The racetronics unit is very interesting. I've never run across it before. :thumbsup:

I actually run my car with "Active Handling On" and "Traction Control" Off. This comes stock on my car and is not an aftermarket system,

I like the tires being able to spin and not having the Computer take timing out as it can not only bog the car and make it rich but can cause the serpentine belt to jump. The Active Handling should keep me from getting to squirly from a side to side aspect which is a nice saftey net.

we have a car that we are doing that we hooked up traction control through the Motec ECU we used teh front wheel speed sensor and a rear WSS and it modulates the flyby wire TB. our idea was to help in the acceleration, the car has a twin turbo 502 and jerrico 5 speed. go figure it should work welll as the motec can modulate the tB very quickly. we will see