Thank you modern engineering (stability control)

[d00df00d]

Great story.

I know my brother's Integra is considerably more agile on 205-section tires than mine is on 245-section tires; it's at least 400 lbs lighter, as well as lower and much more stiffly sprung with its modified suspension.

A slightly different angle: If you look at any two cars with vastly different curb weights that can achieve similar levels of handling performance, the heavier one always has MUCH wider and/or stickier tires.

 

[SteveSRT8]

Originally Posted By: G-MAN
Originally Posted By: rcy
Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
or run an aftermarket tuner! But if you just push it back far enough it becomes the nice 'safety net' it should be.

And rcy, that's another misinformed post. As an example, many cars these days wear out the REAR brakes first even in dry conditions because of traction control tapping on the brakes for wheelspin you can't even feel!

I repeat, all the systems and controlling software are very different. There's many ways to skin this cat.


And how would that happen with a FWD vehicle (of which the majority on the road seem to be?). The minivan in question also being a FWD vehicle.


Exactly. And even on RWD cars this whole notion of widespread premature brake wear due to ESP or traction control is nonsense. The milisecond or so that traction control engages the brakes to correct wheelspin does not induce near the wear that the driver does every time he steps on the pedal to stop the car.

I had the front brake pads done on my 07 300 (RWD) when I got it. I had them check the rear pads. At 50,000 miles the rear pads still had over 3/4 of life.


That simply shows you are a cautious driver. Your experience is not typical.


Anyone who regularly services any LX platform cars from Chrysler will tell you that rear brakes fail first in a huge percentage of the cars.

 

[CBR.worm]

My car is one of the examples of cars that go through about 3 sets of rear pads for every front set. The fact that my tires outlast my brakes says something, but I am not sure what.

I sat on parked on an incline a month or so ago in St. Louis and watched car after car slide downhill through the 4 way stop with their wheels locked. It was sunny and 11 out.

 

[G-MAN]

Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
Originally Posted By: G-MAN
Originally Posted By: rcy
Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
or run an aftermarket tuner! But if you just push it back far enough it becomes the nice 'safety net' it should be.

And rcy, that's another misinformed post. As an example, many cars these days wear out the REAR brakes first even in dry conditions because of traction control tapping on the brakes for wheelspin you can't even feel!

I repeat, all the systems and controlling software are very different. There's many ways to skin this cat.


And how would that happen with a FWD vehicle (of which the majority on the road seem to be?). The minivan in question also being a FWD vehicle.


Exactly. And even on RWD cars this whole notion of widespread premature brake wear due to ESP or traction control is nonsense. The milisecond or so that traction control engages the brakes to correct wheelspin does not induce near the wear that the driver does every time he steps on the pedal to stop the car.

I had the front brake pads done on my 07 300 (RWD) when I got it. I had them check the rear pads. At 50,000 miles the rear pads still had over 3/4 of life.


That simply shows you are a cautious driver. Your experience is not typical.


Anyone who regularly services any LX platform cars from Chrysler will tell you that rear brakes fail first in a huge percentage of the cars.


Uh-huh...

 

[SteveSRT8]

Deny it all you want, it's a typical thing. Even documented here in other threads.

The rear brakes are busy these days on any rwd platform!

 

[rcy]

Google will reveal all sorts of vehicles with rear brake pads wearing out before fronts. However, there are quite a few FWD vehicles with this happening as well. So the traction control causing it isn't necessarily the problem (maybe for your specific vehicle, though I still find it hard to fathom that the traction control is working every single time you accelerate, even in the dry - do you see the warning light on your dash flashing incessantly, because that light is supposed to whenever the traction control system is active?).

Reasons (or guesses) as to the cause range from thinner pads being used at the rear (this makes sense), to different pad materials (softer) being used at the rear vs the front, to brake proportioning being more to the rear than in the past (especially with electronic brake proportioning being the norm, and ABS now widely available to prevent wheel lock up should there be too much of a bias to the rear).

 

[unDummy]

Originally Posted By: rcy
...I hit the ice and felt the slide begin.

I started to steer into the skid (i.e. turned steering wheel left as rear end began to slide left) but before I could really react, I felt/heard the ABS cycling, vaguely noticed the light flashing on the dash, and suddenly I was on the straight and narrow again...


I had a "hand of God" feeling on a black ice covered 270+ degree highway on ramp. The Kia's VSC helped(it did the work, I just pointed the wheels) with maneuvering around several wrecks without hitting anything. I merged onto the highway without incident. When I looked in my rear view, there were many more accidents piling up on that ramp. Everyone was bouncing off the barrier and sticking to it, bouncing off each other, or ricocheting into the ditch on the right. Its a fast sweeper of an on-ramp. VSC, or maybe it was the big guy grabbing the roof like a toy car, saved me!

If there was more ice, or if I was going too fast, VSC wouldn't help. It is there to help when you're caught off guard and not to babysit stupidity. The VSC was working before I even knew what was going on, and way before I could tell that the on-ramp was an ice skating rink. As with any flashing dash light, I let up on the go pedal figuring something broke(its a Kia). Its always pedal to the floor to merge onto the highway pulling full 3/4 G's. That blinking light made me lift off preventing 'excessive on-ramp speed'. The VSC played musical brakes to keep me going where I wanted.

 

[d00df00d]

Originally Posted By: unDummy
I had a "hand of God" feeling on a black ice covered 270+ degree highway on ramp. The Kia's VSC helped(it did the work, I just pointed the wheels) with maneuvering around several wrecks without hitting anything. I merged onto the highway without incident. When I looked in my rear view, there were many more accidents piling up on that ramp. Everyone was bouncing off the barrier and sticking to it, bouncing off each other, or ricocheting into the ditch on the right. Its a fast sweeper of an on-ramp. VSC, or maybe it was the big guy grabbing the roof like a toy car, saved me!

That's exactly the same language (hand of God on the roof of the car etc.) that I remember reading in the first review I saw of the Volvo XC90, with its apparently revolutionary stability control system that made the vehicle "impossible" to roll in evasive maneuvering. I sincerely hope I never find out what that's like on public roads, but it must be a heck of a thing.


Originally Posted By: unDummy
If there was more ice, or if I was going too fast, VSC wouldn't help. It is there to help when you're caught off guard and not to babysit stupidity.