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Traction Control


MRA MN
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I have now gotten a chance to drive in snowy and icy conditions and everything works as expected. The car is much more capable of powering through slippery uphill conditions with the traction control off, though for around town having the traction control is nice.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Don't try pulling the PCM fuses. That disables the whole car and it won't even start. We had several days of rain and I had to go through a slick, muddy spot and I had to get the tractor to pull me through. I pulled the fuses and nothing would work. When I turned on the key all I got was a series of dashed lines on the display. My truck is a 2010 model and this is my first big gripe, other than the POS Continental tires it came with that failed in 16,000 miles, that I have had about this little truck. Another poster modified the module located under the console and that seemed to work so I am going to try that by wiring a NC push button switch into the circuit so thst as long as I hold the button down the traction control will be disabled. I hope it works. My wife's 87 Olds Cierra NEVER got stuck in this kind of mud.

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  • 2 years later...

Super impressed with the traction control on steep muddy/snowy roads after following advice of PetrosA in an earlier post: moving shift lever to "1" allows my 2011 transit connect to "paw" its way up bad roads that requires 4x4 on standard pickups.

I recently had to go up to a job site, 8 miles up a long dirt road that finished with 1/2 mile steep climb (the owner had to use 4x4 on his f150, and had offered to pick me up at bottom since I only had 2wd). My first day up there in bad conditions (wet clay, gravel mud some light november snow) was with my summer tires: I could feel the power shift from right wheel to left wheel quickly so that I was able to maintain speed and not just spin out. When I felt a wheel break traction I noticed the traction control light flash on. Next trip and after nastier weather (muddier), I had my snow tires (studded Arctic Claws - almost too loud and aggressive for highway driving). This time, despite the messier conditions the transit barely broke traction and just hauled up that steep, slippery two track road.

Impressed that I had no loss of power (if manually shifted to first gear) - as would occur with a standard traction control of front wheel drive cars that cut torque as ABS (brakes) minimize slippage on the spinning wheel.

Now I just wish there was more power at highway speeds and in the headwinds we see a lot of in montana.

Edited by mtsolar
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Even tho mine is pre-facelift Gen1 with no electronic aids it's still very capable winter vehicle. Good ground clearance and weight distribution. One more unusual thing that's probably got something to do with it: the tire size is correct for the weight of the van. Most modern cars have one or two sizes too wide contact area causing them to float on the snow instead of penetrating it, gripping to the ground.

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Someone here in this forum sold the full manual transmission conversion kit a while ago, imported from the UK. With pedals and a shifter and all. I doubt you can pass the inspection with an Euro-compliant diesel engine :S

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I can't wait to see if the Traction Control in the Gen 2 responds to shifter position like

the gen 1. It would make the feature quite useful. Right now at low speed on icy conditions

it puts the operator in Danger. At least there is away to switch it off in the Gen 2 .

Winter is coming . When I get to test it I will update

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  • 4 months later...

FUSE #15!! :) The fact that this system cannot be turned off just wasted so much of my time. Thanks to the traction control, I couldn't get up a basic hill because it was icy. I tried about 10 times. I eventually figured out it was fuse #15. I pulled it and got up the hill in one try, no problem. Fix this, Ford.

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  • 2 months later...

The traction control on the Gen 2 can be switched off with the Steering wheel mounted control. Scroll through the settings and you can turn it off. The only issue is that it resets when you re start the TC.

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  • 5 months later...

Lucky Gen 2 owners.  Probably a good default to reset to traction ON after restart.  Then there's us Gen One owners...

One problem with traction control is getting the vehicle to initially move - basically spin control.  Then it is a problem keeping it moving while it plays with the brakes, and cuts power plowing through deep snow - spin control and stability control. 

There are times when I would want to temporarily disable traction control.  But in most cases, once under way, on a normal, flat, slick, road not piled up to the yingyang with snow, I would want the traction control active.  It would be great if one could press a button and disable traction control, then press it again to turn it back on.  (like most normal vehicles) The current pull fuse 15, or interrupt power to the yaw control module gets half the job done - disabling - but requires a vehicle restart (a reboot of all the interconnected systems) to go back to normal.

I'm thinking if one could spoof the analog signal voltage from the yaw sensor one might be able to use that to effectively switch on and off the traction control.  

I *believe* I have read somewhere the analog voltage varies between zero and five volts - the left and right lateral G maximums before going to the DAC for digitization and then onto the CAN bus.  Driving while monitoring the voltage on that line may reveal a zero-G voltage value, which if fed to the circuit from a different source may be enough to spoof the system.  One issue that may arise is that the system is smarter than just blindly accepting voltage as an input - but compares the steering angle sensor values with the output of the yaw sensor and "flag" when the data becomes nonsensical - i.e., throttle open, steering sensor maxed out left or right, speed sensor showing significant speed, yet the yaw sensor is happily showing no lateral forces.

Just some idle thoughts...

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The  Gen 2 Tc's have two ways the Traction control is switched on and off.  If you have the steering wheel information control it is  switched on and off there, and if you have the basic model it is a switch on the center console in front of the shifter.

The biggest issue I have with the traction control  is the low speed operation.  If there was a Low speed algorithm and a road speed algorithm, it would be very good.

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  • 5 years later...

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