I hate modern cars and open diffs

I hate open diffs. I also hate stability control that I cannot turn completely off.  Unfortunately I have both.  

So I got to playing around yesterday on some north Florida sandy dirt roads (professional driver,  closed-ish course) and the combination of the above mentioned unfortunate conditions resulted in some peculiar behavior.  

The computer allows me to have a little but of fun coming out of corners,  once the computer decided that was enough it would straighten up but if I kept my foot down the car would start dancing side to side. One side would be spinning then it felt like the brake was applied on that side which because of the open diff would then send all the power to the other side and it would walk that way for about twenty feet then that brake would be applied and the dance would continue until I ran out of nerve. Same thing would happen from a dig, chasing the ass end left then right all the way up to very uncomfortable speeds. Definitely not what I would call fun.  Coming back down the road you could see the tire marks from the tire spinning jumping from left to right all the way down.  I should have gotten a picture. 

I've read of a cheap easy mod to completely defeat the stability system.  Probably will be doing that.  But I'm almost tempted to throw an lsd diff in it too. 

Not really asking a question here, just venting. 

What car is this?

E-diffs are the worst.

I find myself turning the DSC off in the E38 quite a bit in the snow.  At low speeds in a straight line, it does an ok job with gentle power reduction and some light use of the rear brakes to limit (but not eliminate) wheelspin.  There's no obnoxious strong brake grabbing like I've seen from some other e-diff setups though.  At higher speeds it's mostly just gentle power reduction.  The only time the power reduction feels excessive or harsh is if you step into the throttle suddenly and generate a lot of wheelspin quickly. 

But if you get the car sliding too much in a turn, especially tail-out, it'll grab a bootful of front brake on one side to try to pull the tail back in.  That drives me absolutely mental, especially when the car is actually doing exactly what I wanted, expected and planned for up until the point where it decides I must be wrong.  Or at low speeds on really slick roads, occasionally that move will lead to losing most of your forward momentum because the car would rather you be nearly stopped in an intersection than just sliding through it at 7 mph with the tail out a bit and keeping the power on to stay moving. 

That car could seriously use a limited slip in the snow, but it's not in the budget right now, as there's no cheap way to do it.  Interestingly, remove the snow and the mushy, not sticky enough snow tires and the need for the LSD mostly goes away, as the car does a pretty good job of keeping weight on the inside rear. And getting the DSC to do anything with the summers on involves getting a few steps beyond what's already irresponsible on the street. 

Miata?  Lol, i traded the e39 wagon for my NB for the same reasons.  I don't like cars that wont let me do what i want.  After ABS its all lame, well, except for the minivan, im fine with it there because the whole experience is like punishment for having so much fun in my other cars.

In other words, i feel ya bruh

most modern cars all you have to do is pull the abs fuse(s) and maybe the esc fuse if equipped.

Kill switch in the Mazda 2 kills stability and traction control completely. Makes the dirt roads around here fun.

Wife's Smartcar requires a little dance of the key and some instrument panel button pushing to defeat, but then you lose ABS too. That car WILL come around on you then!

I don't think I've ever driven a car hard that applied the brakes for traction control. I have driven one that pulls throttle though and it's super annoying. I love the DSC module in my e36. It's still wired in, but not plumbed. It sits there in the engine bay, fully functional, but not in the intake stream.

boxedfox said:

What car is this?

Late model charger sxt if memory serves me. 

MrFancypants said:

Ranger50 said:

E-diffs are the worst.

Man, I strongly disagree. My GTI has it and it's amazing. Of course I'd rather have a proper limited slip, but the electronic brake actuated system is at least 80% as effective when used right. 

Well, it does become 100% dependent on the programming. But I agree the idea is great, and if programmed correctly could function really well.

There are different flavors of E-diffs and they work differently- the newer GTI has a latitude front wheel to front wheel Haldex. It's not the same as ABS.

 I think for 90% of the people driving cars equipped with them, they're probably great.

1) fwd e diff is different. 
2) depends on the programming. 
3) that dodge likely has the lousiest programming ever. 

it is a shame the Dodge has some of the worst programming, the Abarth 500 has some of the best. It is very hard to feel when it kicks in unless you get into a very traction limited situation with a lot of power and places where the wheels will occasionally get some grip, otherwise it is fairly transparent. I have heard that some cars, BMW and Porsche come to mind, work very well with traction control and a true LSD, the systems mesh that well

Sounds like lousy programming.  The usual complaint I hear about them is that they work so well that you rely on them right up to the point where you've melted the brake pads..

I had more fun, never felt safer and more in control and was never stuck and never surprised by my spooled rear. It's a shame the vast majority of the general public would rather have the power killed and be barely able to manage 3mph through a snowy intersection than get a little sideways.

vwcorvette said:

Wife's Smartcar requires a little dance of the key and some instrument panel button pushing to defeat, but then you lose ABS too. That car WILL come around on you then!

So we owned a later Smartcar that had removed the ability to disable traction control, and that's what caused me to ditch that car. On a steep hill in the snow (with snow tires) it would detect slip and kill power instead of letting me keep momentum up, I would basically be stalled half-way up that damn hill (divided road) and cause a minor traffic jam as the it walked its way up at 10km/h. I spit on its grave.

Our '14 Jeep Grand Cherokee has excellent nanny controls. I use slippery setting when needed and it doesn't cut power but does make it harder to rev and down shift. But that is what you want on snow covered roads. The sand setting should be renamed "hoon", lol. Whipping E36 M3ties with great nanny controls, who knew?

I would like to upgrade to the Durango at some point because its a stretched version of the GC, but it doesn't, AFAIK, have the fancy nannies. So probably not.

It just works.

mad_machine said:

it is a shame the Dodge has some of the worst programming, the Abarth 500 has some of the best. It is very hard to feel when it kicks in unless you get into a very traction limited situation with a lot of power and places where the wheels will occasionally get some grip, otherwise it is fairly transparent. I have heard that some cars, BMW and Porsche come to mind, work very well with traction control and a true LSD, the systems mesh that well

The BMW e-diff is pretty subtle, at least in the older cars like mine.  So I could definitely see it working well with a real LSD in there.  It would probably just end up doing power reduction and not using the brakes, as it wouldn't sense a wheel speed difference between the sides when spinning in the snow. 

Now if there were a way to reprogram it to just limit to a target wheel slip percentage (like it does in a straight line) and do nothing else (no stability control), that would be much more useful.  I also wouldn't mind increasing the 5% wheel slip target to something like 7%, as I think the snow tires still have a little more to give with a little more slip. 

I had the '13 Mazda 5 with three pedals well and truly stuck trying to get it up a hill in a goodly amount of fresh snow. I feel like I need to turn in a ball or something because all I needed to do to get it out was turn the traction control system back on and it drove right on out of there.

Conversely, I nearly hit someone who pulled out in front of me on an icy road when I was driving a then-new 96 Grand Cherokee.  The ABS decided things were slipping too much so it didn't try to brake at all.  I wound up just cramming it in reverse and laying on the gas in order to avoid the collision.

The GL350 had/has stability and traction control such that I couldn't force it to misbehave on snowy roads.  Mash the throttle and kick the wheel to one side?  It just turned, no big deal.  Get going relatively fast and stab the brakes while cutting the wheel?  Yeah, it just turned.

Definitely all in the programming and the number and type of sensors.

Brett_Murphy said:

There are different flavors of E-diffs and they work differently- the newer GTI has a latitude front wheel to front wheel Haldex. It's not the same as ABS.

 I think for 90% of the people driving cars equipped with them, they're probably great.

Previous generations of GTI came with XDS, which was entirely ABS based. It seems they've programmed it quite well because it makes a big difference in how the car handles. 

Also never  had problem with overheating the brakes, even at the track. Brake wear isn't an issue either as I managed to get about 100k miles on the original pads and I'm still using the original front rotors, which have 140k on them. 

My first experience with the e-diff in my Pathfinder almost killed me.  Just having a little drift fun with the nanny turned off then at 20 mph it suddenly returned trying to send me into the wrong lane.  Scared the E36 M3 out of me and definitely not safe.  Had the truck done what my inputs requested all would have been smooth and controlled.  It will also do the little dance where it locked one wheel at a time back and forth while the other spins, with the V8 it will also do this on pavement

wae said:

Conversely, I nearly hit someone who pulled out in front of me on an icy road when I was driving a then-new 96 Grand Cherokee.  The ABS decided things were slipping too much so it didn't try to brake at all.  I wound up just cramming it in reverse and laying on the gas in order to avoid the collision.

Mine has had its ABS killed for pretty much this reason.  It's too sensitive and doesn't allow enough wheel slip, so it's pretty easy to brake better than the ABS can.  In particular, with snow tires on snowy roads, it'll stop a lot faster threshold braking without ABS than it will with the ABS enabled (either braking just short of ABS activation or with ABS activated). 

In reply to akylekoz :

Yeah,  most people will never experience this condition and therefore have no idea how much it sucks the life out of driving when you know how to drive.

The 997 era Porsche system is pretty amazing in my experience.   You hear it working hard but it never makes its presence felt.  Probably the closest someone can get to the Motorsport systems they use in GT3 cars.