Active Handling.

[maguromic]

"... I thought traction control and movable aero device are legal across the board on cars."

He only asked about streamliners.

DW

I am glad you are  back!!!  Tony  

[desotoman]

Real men start their cars by handcrank,

Pat, Pat, Pat,

Real men are smarter than that. LOL That is what I love about this site, we can agree to disagree.

Tom G.

[McRat]

We just got back from our annual company Christmas party, so I'm even more sarcastic than usual. 

 

[bbarn]

I wasn't too interested in the active control or the traction control, I was more interested in movable aero.

ps, I'll see if we can get a hand crank on the 540, who wants first dibs at starting it!

[SPARKY]

not with out an inertia starter or a 10 ga blank shot gun shell

[wobblywalrus]

The automatic controls really help when you are not paying close attention, you need to stop or turn in a hurry, and you overreact when you panic at the last moment.  Another time is when you are in tightly spaced and fast freeway traffic and something happens.  You can concentrate more on keeping from getting hit and less on trying to maintain control.  In ugly real life street situations these devices are useful. 

[SPARKY]

I was behind an Infiniti in Dallas that hit fairly deep water on a bridge during a downpour, got completely side ways and the ESC violently snapped it back and frorth twice with no frt wheel angle change and motored on down the freeway at 65 as if nothing had happened

[maguromic]

Didn't the front canards on Jim Fueling's liner have active control? I remember in the mid 90's he had some sort of system mounted on the front canards that trimmed them at high speed.

Thinking about it I don't think it would be all that difficult to do mechanically for canards and wings.  You could use either load or position sensors to indicate lift and automatically add wing to counter it.  Might also require electronic dampening to avoid dithering but that should be also relatively easy as well.  Looks like a fun project for someone. Tony

[Seldom Seen Slim]

On a note sorta related to active (driving) control and the fact that it allows mere mortals to buy super (power) cars -- bikes have a similar problem, remember.  Any squid can waltz into a dealership and plunk down $10-12k and buy a ZX14 or 'Busa and wheel out a few minutes later with a bike that'll hit the 186-mph speed limiter on the way home form that dealership.  Should the manufacturer or the dealer do something to limit the carnage that often results?  Maybe some "similar" sort of active handling control for new bikes (even liter-size bikes will get up to 180 or so out of the box) should become mandatory -- if the cars have it.

No, I'm not for instituting such limits on the bikes -- just drawing a comparison between bikes and cars.  Okay -- let the fur continue to fly.

[Blue]

The biggest issue with most of these "traction control" systems is that they use the ABS to apply braking to the slipping tire, then reduce power through the ECU.  The higher performance systems (like the Jeep GC Limited and the Subaru WRX/STi) use brakes on the spiders of the front/rear torque splitter and differentials, THEN they modulate the brakes and limit the engine power. 

The former systems responds to any adversity by taking power out of the system, the latter starts by transferring the power to the tires with traction and only reducing power when everything is spinning.  The difference is how these two systems feel and perform is night and day.

The better system also doesn't overheat the brakes as easily.