Well I for one am happy my 13 GT500 will come with launch and traction control. I'm so use to AWD I'm gonna need some help getting use to limited traction again.
No, you can not limit torque to create traction. Best that can be done is keep the tires on the edge of slip, but at the end of the day, there was no "extra" traction created, just the available traction used.
I see this quote repeated often "as it took a great driver all day at the strip to recreate the same results as the traction control/launch management system did on the very first run!", anyone have the original reference?
I see this quote repeated often "as it took a great driver all day at the strip to recreate the same results as the traction control/launch management system did on the very first run!", anyone have the original reference?
pretty interesting piece on this from a guy with a turbo '66 mustang in hotrod mag...
Q: For us non-physics guys, please explain F=uN.Turbo Tech - Questions And Answers - Supercharger Comparison - Hot Rod
A: F, the forward force that accelerates your car, is the product of "u", which is the traction coefficient for a given pair of materials (in this case rubber on asphalt) times the "downforce" ("N") of the drive wheels on the road. The width of the tire is never in this calculation. The only reason wider tires can help is they can increase the "effective u" just a little, not a lot.
Wide tires are far more "show" than "go," no matter how much our egos want to disagree with that. The bottom line is g’s, and we’ve done a lot of testing in this area. The data should speak for itself, and correspond to tests on the street. Track conditions are typically better. The lowest traction limits we’ve measured are all on front-wheel-drive cars. This is because of the weight transfer offthe drive wheels when accelerating. They’re always between .40g and .50g.
Rear-wheel drive vehicles fare better. Most pickup trucks generate between .48 and .52g, thanks to in-optimized weight distribution. Non-posi cars are again a little better. They typically generate a maximum of .50 to .55g almost every time. We tested a Ford Crown Victoria with 215mm rubber, and it would spin the right rear at .50g. Next test was a ‘66 Mustang Coupe with 195mm rubber, which spun ‘em at .53g. A Volvo wagon (195mm tires) spins the right rear at .55g. This Mustang Fastback, with a posi and BFG radial T/A tires (215 mm) pulled .54g before the changes, and with the battery in the trunk now pulls .55 to .56g. Grand National Buicks (with posi) usually got .55g, 5.0L Mustangs (225mm, with posi) get .56 to .59g. My friend Rich has a ‘69 Super Bee, good posi, 215mm BFG’s, and pulls .57g before they spin. Note that these are not big differences from the best to the worst!
Now for some wide tire data: my friend John has a ’66 Nova with 275mm rubber and a good posi, yet it pulls .53 g max, right in there with my skinny-tired ’66 Mustang. Rich also owns a Hemi Charger with 275mm rubber, which can’t generate more than .55g, which you’ll note is less than his Super Bee does on 215s. That’s because he has played the weight distribution game on the Super Bee.
Highest street tire numbers ever? Weight distribution is a player. New Z28s (245 mm) commonly pull .62g max. My friend Shirl has a ‘79 Corvette (245 mm) pulls .65g on street tires.
See where I’m going here? There’s no magic "factor of two" yet. Honestly, even a posi only seems worth .05g or so (10 percent). How many guys do we run into that think a posi will double their traction?
Want to see big improvements? Change the tire compound. My friend Dave bought some BFG Drag Radials for his 5.0L Mustang. His 225mm street tires spin at .59g every time, yet his 235mm Drag Radials consistently pulled .68g. That’s 15 percent! A co-worker brought in his NSX with 245mm race tires, and thanks to the combined help of its mid-engine layout, we were measuring .75 g launches, over and over again!
I’m not saying that wider tires would hurt, I’m just arguing that they’re far more for show than go. They wouldn’t double the traction. Or add 50 percent, or even 25 percent. The max we’re talking is probably under 10 percent. So without tubbing the car, I can probably squeak in some 245mm tires if I had to. By trying to play the testosterone factor low on this car, my best money will go towards a set of drag radials, and selectively moving weight to the rear, not tubbing the car and running 315mm street tires.
Q: What's the big deal about g's on launch?
A: G's are inversely proportional to velocity. What that means is that peak g's occur at very low speeds and continue to drop as speed goes up. When we're talking traction limits, we're talking peak g's, and by definition, they happen at launch or soon after when hitting the torque peak in low, if gearing is not optimized. So when you want to talk tires, or traction limits, you talk g's on launch.
Of course g's on launch are everything to guys who only think about e.t. Blowing the launch kills e.t. Blowing the last 300 feet of the track kills trap speed. In a related sense when you want to discuss power, you tend to discuss g's at some higher speed, because, let's face it, even a Corolla can pull .50 g at 2 mph and chirp the tires. And a Hemi Charger can pull .55g at 2 mph—which doesn't look like much of an advantage! But, by 30, 40, 50 mph, the Corolla's low power/weight ratio has g's plummeting down, so it’s only pulling .20 g at 30, while the Charger can still spin 'em at .55g at 30. Why? It had the power to pull 1.0 or more g at 2 mph, but thanks to tires was limited to the .55 g level. At the track, the Mustang consistently pulls .70g at 60 mph. This makes it clear why, on the street where the traction limit is more like .55g, the car will spin the rear tires at speeds below 70 mph.
their website puts some strange character in place of apostrophes for whatever reason.
Have you every used any kind of traction control or done any power management?
Not sure who you are asking, but every high horsepower car I have driven in the last 10+ years has had it, they were all terrible.
I routinely got sub 2.0 60 fts in my '03 Cobra without traction control, and on a decent tracks was usually in the 1.8s with a best of 1.839.
For the bast 5 years I've been driving a friend of mine's C6 Z06 at the track, and only tried traction control once, as it was so bad.
I guess there is some chance the 13 GT500 will be as good a good driver, but I'll just say I'm skeptical.
I do like the feature to set a launch RPM before hand, i just hope you can do that with the traction control off if you want to. That would be helpful as hitting the exact RPM you want while staging before the lights come down can be an issue.
[1] this is what i disagree with...[1] Disagree with what?
[2] Traction control limits torque to the tires, IT DOES NOT ENHANCE TRACTION AT ALL!
no prob, the last time you saw it was probably in another one of my posts:lol1: i know i've posted it at least two other times here, years ago.Thanks for posting! I remember reading that a few years ago (hell, it may have been 5).
Not sure who you are asking, but every high horsepower car I have driven in the last 10+ years has had it, they were all terrible.
I routinely got sub 2.0 60 fts in my '03 Cobra without traction control, and on a decent tracks was usually in the 1.8s with a best of 1.839.
For the bast 5 years I've been driving a friend of mine's C6 Z06 at the track, and only tried traction control once, as it was so bad.
I guess there is some chance the 13 GT500 will be as good a good driver, but I'll just say I'm skeptical.
I do like the feature to set a launch RPM before hand, i just hope you can do that with the traction control off if you want to. That would be helpful as hitting the exact RPM you want while staging before the lights come down can be an issue.
[1] this is what i disagree with...
"I think "traction control" will prove to be a big disappointment for both the ZL1 and the GT500."
[2] i never once said that traction control "enhances" traction, don't put words in my mouth. traction control controls traction. it attempts to maintain traction either through either torque limiting, individual wheel braking, differential control(if so equipped to do so), or any combination of those. with a high resolution system with significant amounts of tuning, it is actually possible for a traction control system to out perform a human being. will this current generation of muscle cars possess such a system? unlikely i think, though i do believe that it will take a very skilled driver to out perform it(both from what we've heard about the development of these systems, as well as what 86merc posted based on his talk with hameedi).
86merc beat me to it, but all you gotta do is look at the systems available for the xtreme 10.5/outlaw 10.5 classes and the like, as well as ALMS/LMS and other high end GT/sportscar racing series.
The "Launch Control" in the 2013 GT500 works completely different than "Traction Control" (which it also has in addition to LC) Simply put LC limits the engine's amount of power and torque in relation to either spikes in RPM and or wheel spin. With ECT it will actually close the throttle as well as other function's to control power application.
The traction control you had in your Cobra will apply the brakes to try to control individual wheel spin as well as retard spark and enrich fuel mixture.....this is counterproductive to what one is trying to achieve in drag racing.
Don't be confused by the term 'traction control' as the term is used by lots of different company's but for different applications and purposes.. For example the "Davis Traction Control" works much in the same way (but it has more capability) as Ford'd Launch control does in the 13' by limiting engine power output and has nothing to do with applying brakes.
I think you are too hung up on semantics. The fact is, No matter how sophisticated the system, it is just limiting torque to the tire. That is it, actual traction is not enhanced in any way.
Traction control isn't supposed to create extra traction it's supposed to help control the traction that the car has already.
Since the title of this tread is "LOL.....ZL1 owners facing traction issues", I think the question has been answered already in terms of the ZL1, it is a big disappointment.
Based on the expectations in this tread, I think the GT500 will be too.
No question a computer can be made to outdrive a human being, whether they put that technology in a 2013 GT500, I'll believe it when I see it.
I think you are too hung up on semantics. The fact is, No matter how sophisticated the system, it is just limiting torque to the tire. That is it, actual traction is not enhanced in any way.
uhh, the comments in the OP were from someone driving a ZL1 in 40 degree temperaturesoke: any car with a solid amount of power will have traction issues in those conditions, especially any car equipped with these tires...Since the title of this tread is "LOL.....ZL1 owners facing traction issues", I think the question has been answered already in terms of the ZL1, it is a big disappointment.
uhh, the comments in the OP were from someone driving a ZL1 in 40 degree temperaturesoke: any car with a solid amount of power will have traction issues in those conditions, especially any car equipped with these tires...
how about we wait until we see these cars run in realistic temperatures before we make any wide sweeping proclamations.
i think GMs marketing of the ZL1 has been a joke(namely pretty much every word that's came out of al O's mouth), i think GM probably has the worst QC of the big 3 right now, and i think GM were absolutely caught with their pants down with only a pretty good product vs the competition, but i also think that GM has built one hell of a car in every single way and has the know how to implement a quality traction control system. hell, they already laid most of the ground work years ago with the ZR1.