steering and traction protection

Altron said:
All I know is that if I stall out, the brakes take a lot of pressure to move and do a really shitty job of stopping the car. They're barely sufficent to keep the car stopped on a 10% incline, without power.
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That's because your brake system (the booster actually) relies on the engine being on for them to work properly.

An hydraulic system would work just fine, but it wouldn't feel as smooth.
 
Power brakes are still hydraulic. They use a fluid to transfer the pressure from the brake pedal to the brake pads.
 
So, did some fun rain drivin' today.

I braked a bit hard because I didn't realize how close I was to a turn, slid a bit, nothing big. I don't need ABS to recover from that.

Then I was in the Mazda for a bit, with my dad driving. He told me that the Mazda had Traction Control, and that since it was raining, we should play with it.

So we're making a left onto this busy road in the rain, and he just guns the motor. We're in second, doing like 40mph, redlining it. The front wheels were spinning, but not as much as I expected. The traction control thing was lighting up and beeping.

So then we're sitting at a light, and my dad yells "Pull it over, bitch!" to some slut who nearly caused an accident.

After that, he floors it again, and takes it to like 70mph, not too much spinning, although I did see the tachometer hit 7k RPMs. Redline is 6.5k.

Then, we decided to test out traction control some more, so as he's taking this tight turn, he floors it, and the light goes on, and the front wheels spin, but it's not too bad. If I did it in my car, I woulda done a full spin. He didn't even front-fishtail.

My dad drives like a madman.
 
Your dad is the type of driver I LOATH! Those features are there to help people when they accidentally get into a bad sitution. Car manufacturers don't add them just so people can purposely be idiots. One day when the traction controls craps out and he goes up over the curb and kills someone maybe he'll learn why you should never rely on fancy features...if he accidentally lost control and the traction control crapped out at the same time that would just be uber bad karma but purposely making it kick in like that is just plain stupidity.
 
My dad prides himself on driving ability. He doesn't need traction control whatsoever. He learned how to drive on a '73 Dodge Monaco wagon on a mountain with a camper towing behind it. We were just playing around to see what traction control does.

I've never seen a car that my dad had a difficult time driving, including box trucks, a tiny eighties Mazda with manual everything, a Jeep Wrangler off-road on a mountain. From what I can tell, his policy is that if it has wheels, he can drive it.
 
Altron said:
My dad prides himself on driving ability. He doesn't need traction control whatsoever. He learned how to drive on a '73 Dodge Monaco wagon on a mountain with a camper towing behind it. We were just playing around to see what traction control does.

I've never seen a car that my dad had a difficult time driving, including box trucks, a tiny eighties Mazda with manual everything, a Jeep Wrangler off-road on a mountain. From what I can tell, his policy is that if it has wheels, he can drive it.
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Would he take those turns in a vehicle without traction control? It's my understanding that traction control is meant to kick in when based on the speed and other factors there is a high risk of the car sliding out.
 
Nixy said:
Would he take those turns in a vehicle without traction control? It's my understanding that traction control is meant to kick in when based on the speed and other factors there is a high risk of the car sliding out.
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Yeah, he would take those turns. He would just keep the car in control, instead of mashing the pedal to the floor, trying to get traction control to turn on.
 
Altron said:
Yeah, he would take those turns. He would just keep the car in control, instead of mashing the pedal to the floor, trying to get traction control to turn on.
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I meant would he take those turns in the same manner he did with the traction control.

My point is electronics and the like aren't perfect, there is ALWAYS a chance something like that could fail. If one accidentally gets into a situation where traction controls kicks in it's one thing. If one is PURPOSELY making traction control kick in and taking turns at an unsafe speed and RELYING on traction control to save their ass then they're being retarded because there's ALWAYS a chance that the traction control is going to not work as it should. One shouldn't use electronics and fancy devices as an excuse to act like a retard just expecting the fancy toy to work like it should. Shit doesn't work like it should all of the time and by PURPOSELY taking the turns at a speed which would be UNSAFE in a car without traction control (and thus unsafe if the traction control failed) your dad was being retarded and trusting your life and his life to a COMPUTER.
 
It's not like the traction control was neccessary. We were seeing if we could get it to kick in. When it kicked in, my dad still had control of the vehicle, he was just choosing to peel out. The traction control just kept it from really peeling out.

The point is, he was completely in control of the manuver the entire time, and could have stopped the wheels from spinning with ease. He chose not to, to see if the traction control worked. If it hadn't, he would have stopped them from spinning himself.
 
Altron said:
It's not like the traction control was neccessary. We were seeing if we could get it to kick in. When it kicked in, my dad still had control of the vehicle, he was just choosing to peel out. The traction control just kept it from really peeling out.

The point is, he was completely in control of the manuver the entire time, and could have stopped the wheels from spinning with ease. He chose not to, to see if the traction control worked. If it hadn't, he would have stopped them from spinning himself.
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Your dad, with all due respect, needs to have his license taken from him. A public road, with traffic, is no place to experiment.
 
Who said anything about traffic? We were the only car in 200 yards in any direction, on a four lane road.

At no point in time were we anywhere outside the safe handling limits of the Mazda.
 
Altron said:
Who said anything about traffic? We were the only car in 200 yards in any direction, on a four lane road.

At no point in time were we anywhere outside the safe handling limits of the Mazda.
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AHEM...A public road...with traffic...is not the place to test the handling limits of your vehicle.
 
We just wanted to see if the traction control worked, by peeling out. It did. It didn't us really peel out.

My dad's been doing this since the early 70s. He knows how to peel out without losing control.
 
Altron said:
We just wanted to see if the traction control worked, by peeling out. It did. It didn't us really peel out.

My dad's been doing this since the early 70s. He knows how to peel out without losing control.
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One last time...A public road...with traffic...is not the place to test the limits of your vehicle. I don't care how long your father has been driving, nor do I care how 'good' of a driver he is. He shouldn't be doing that on a public road, period.
 
Gato_Solo said:
One last time...A public road...with traffic...is not the place to test the limits of your vehicle. I don't care how long your father has been driving, nor do I care how 'good' of a driver he is. He shouldn't be doing that on a public road, period.
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Sad that you have to actually say it, isn't it?
 
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