The best way to practise car control is to simply find a icy parking lot. I love when people ride with me for the first time in the snow and I can scare the crap out of them by pulling long drifts in a FWD ca,r and 360's,etc in parking lots. A car reacts almost identically on ice as on pavement its just alot easier to break the traction, plus it puts no wear on the tires.

 

Hmmm, 3200 pounds x 60 mph= 192,000! Can you say flattened? Hope you learned your lesson and will be more cautious next time.

"It's all fun and games 'til someone pokes their eye out!"

 

+1

 

Go rent a rwd and mess around when it snow/rain. Make sure you get one that's not too powerful like our Z (a G35 sedan would be perfect), and find an empty street or lot and start fish-tailing. I used to have Pathfinder with no traction control and had a blast doing slides and drifts when wet. But since our Z is so powerful in the rear, too much gas would surely send you doing 360s.

 

glad youre safe, i spun out in the Z doing under 30MPH in LIGHT snow the first week i had it!!! AFter that, i REFUSE to drive this car in any hint of snow. But im glad everything worked out bro.

 

Thanks. Yeah I have more than learned my lesson. Two seconds is all that separated me from having my current nice and relaxing weekend or weeks in traction or ya know, being dead.

 

In terms of VDC, I was thinking it should kick in immediately the same way the traction control does. I.E. as soon as you hear some wheel spin the engine cuts out. With VDC does it take longer for the computer to decide that the driver needs help?

Today it was raining and I was making a right at a stoplight. I was going 20mph or less and in mid turn I figured I would give the car some gas and see how the VDC would keep me in line. So I goose the throttle and expect the engine to cut out and/or the brakes to kick in but that the back end would stay in line. To my surprise now my back end is in the next lane and so I quickly countersteered. I kept sliding until I was in the next lane and then everything was ok. It seemed like I was sliding forever, though it was probably only a second or two, wondering if I was going to stay on the road.

Since I countersteered pretty quickly would this have prevented the VDC from kicking in?

I'm just trying to get an understand of when/how to expect the VDC to kick in.

 

The VDC does take some time to kick in, especially the more drastic the and fast the yaw hits the car. I had the same thing happen to me.

The VDC didn't kick in until I was already sideways and at that point it was trying to correct me going in my new, BAD, direction! Heh. That's why I was counter-steering and having all the drama. It did stop me from spinning completely out. I was fighting it back and forth to get the car under the right heading again.

If I had it off there would have been no time for me to react fast enough. My rearend snapped out so fast I think I hurt my neck. VDC bought me the time to start getting things wrangled.

In your situation your quick counter steering may have indeed beat the VDC to action. Or if you are running lowering springs, after market wheels or non factory tire sizes, it can through off the VDC entirely. Sometimes in to doing nothing.

 

I found some information at Edmunds which talks about people who have spun out on dry roads even with stability control active. It doesn't defy the laws of physics but it should come on before things get out of hand IMO. Anyway the system is what it is, and I will take that into account.

From taking a look at whats on the web, it definitely gives the impression that the system should prevent the back end from coming out at all. Here is a page with a few videos

http://www.esceducation.org/about_es...n_action.shtml

In the first lane change maneuver its a pretty quick lane change, definitely quicker than I was going with faster steering wheel changes. As I was going around (about 20mph) I kept the steering wheel angle the same and just gave some gas. As soon as the car started to yaw more to the right, from watching the videos, the left rear brake should have kicked in to try to slow the yaw. From looking at the page, and from what I would expect as being good design, this should happen before I have the chance to react and coutner steer. I can understand that if the left rear wheel didn't have traction then VDC can't help me, but VDC should have still been active and trying.

Anyway I'll try to do some more "safe" testing at some point and see how quickly the VDC kicks in.

 

Remember too that it can only fight physics so much. If you have too much energy going, no amount of computer ef'ery will help.

So don't think you're going to approach a sharp bend at 100mph and yank the wheel to the left and not fly off the cliff!

 

Sure, my problem isn't so much that I slid in a low speed manuever, its that the VDC didn't come on, so there was no computer effort. If it came on and I still slid then I wouldn't be posting since VDC did its best, but I didn't see the VDC light come on which is what I was surprised about.

 

At least some VDC's take into account the driver input and goes into action when the driver puts in the _wrong_ input. Hopefully, the VDC will also come in even with "proper" driver input if the back end starts to come around. I don't know if the Nissan VDC works that way.

 

ROFLMAO!!!

Thats my excuse for drifting, i tell my wife, "babe, thats how you keep control when when the tired slip. h4r h4r "

 

It's not the VDC, It's not the skills, It's was the work of

...Guardian Angels that were watching either you, or the driver that was going to hit you. Believe my friend...and you will see...

 

Heh, the other driver would have WON; big *** Lexus GS400.

But yes, I've often thought somthing's watching out for me for unknown reasons. The stuff I've gotten in and out of....man oh man. Maybe I am supposed to be the next Mussolini.