Reprogramming the Traction Control System...
Thread Starter
Le Mans Master
Joined: Oct 2007
Posts: 6,149
Likes: 11
From: Greater Detroit Metro MI, when I'm not travelling.
Reprogramming the Traction Control System...
Here is something I have been thinking about for a while...
The Corvette has a very advanced Traction control system. The vehicle monitors the speed of the front wheels vs the rear wheels via the ABS sensors, and is able to tell the exact moment when wheel spin occurs, and how much wheel spin is occuring.
Once that happens, a protocol is started. I don't know the specific details, but the basics of it are that it will first begin to pull ignition timing, making the engine lose some power. There is a limit to how much timing can be pulled, and if this is not sucessful in eliminating wheelspin, the ECU will then begin closing the throttle plate. This usually does the trick. Once traction is found, the ECU opens the throttle plate gradually and restores target ignition timing.
It is a very advanced and very clever system, and theoretically it provides the ECU with complete and absolute control over engine power and thus wheelspin. And I applaud GM for programming it for a sportscar; even on a bone stock car I was able to break traction and slide the back end of the car around some before the system intervened. Similar systems in other cars (BMW / Mercedes / VW) freak out and cut ALL power the instant your tires break traction. I drove a Lexus that felt like the car had sank into mud the moment you begun sliding.
But it is not perfect, as evidenced by the fact that any halfway decent driver will post considerably better times in any kind of racing with the system OFF.
The real problem is when you mod the car to make VAST amounts of horsepower over what it had before, the protocol becomes somewhat... Uneffective. With a supercharger and 600RWHP, I can leave traction control ON and still smoke the tires right into the rev limiter. I can spin DONUTS with T/C on! Obviously, if the tires have enough traction for, say, 300ft-lbs of torque, and the engine makes 500ft-lbs, no amount of ignition timing retard will stop wheelspin.
What I have leaned is that by getting on the gas gradually I can sense when wheelspin is about to occur, and also give the system time to detect it and take appropriate measure... Also if 55% throttle breaks traction and I am at 60% throttle, it will be much easier for the TC computer to just retard some timing or back off 5% trottle than it would be for it to deal with me being at 100% throttle.
Another obvious way of dealing with this is by improving the amount of traction the system has to work with; if I got much wider and stickier tires the TC system wouldn't have such a large torque vs traction differential to deal with...
But what if I could reprogram the Traction control system's tables to make it more agressive? What if I could fine tune it EXACTLY for my setup?
Could I run different TC maps per gear?
With enough experimentation it would be possible to determine how much throttle the tires can take in each gear and have the TC go right there... Done right, this would allow me to hold the gas to the floor and let TC provide the maximum amount of torque the tires could hold... And if anything odd happened (bumps, dirt, etc), wheelspin would be easily remedied because the car would be on the edge of traction; not 200ft-lbs beyond it...
Cars like the BMW M3 come stock with launch control that performs a very similar function.... It seems like the Corvette already has all the hardware in it, so why can't we make it work better?
Or for that matter why doesn't the factory TC work better? My only guess is that the computer clock speed controlling is not fast enough to keep up with the rapidly changing conditions as wheelspin occurs, so the system is always "chasing its own tail", trying to make adjustments in comparatively sparse time segments and then having to wait to see if they worked...
Does anyone know? Any thoughts or ideas here?
The Corvette has a very advanced Traction control system. The vehicle monitors the speed of the front wheels vs the rear wheels via the ABS sensors, and is able to tell the exact moment when wheel spin occurs, and how much wheel spin is occuring.
Once that happens, a protocol is started. I don't know the specific details, but the basics of it are that it will first begin to pull ignition timing, making the engine lose some power. There is a limit to how much timing can be pulled, and if this is not sucessful in eliminating wheelspin, the ECU will then begin closing the throttle plate. This usually does the trick. Once traction is found, the ECU opens the throttle plate gradually and restores target ignition timing.
It is a very advanced and very clever system, and theoretically it provides the ECU with complete and absolute control over engine power and thus wheelspin. And I applaud GM for programming it for a sportscar; even on a bone stock car I was able to break traction and slide the back end of the car around some before the system intervened. Similar systems in other cars (BMW / Mercedes / VW) freak out and cut ALL power the instant your tires break traction. I drove a Lexus that felt like the car had sank into mud the moment you begun sliding.
But it is not perfect, as evidenced by the fact that any halfway decent driver will post considerably better times in any kind of racing with the system OFF.
The real problem is when you mod the car to make VAST amounts of horsepower over what it had before, the protocol becomes somewhat... Uneffective. With a supercharger and 600RWHP, I can leave traction control ON and still smoke the tires right into the rev limiter. I can spin DONUTS with T/C on! Obviously, if the tires have enough traction for, say, 300ft-lbs of torque, and the engine makes 500ft-lbs, no amount of ignition timing retard will stop wheelspin.
What I have leaned is that by getting on the gas gradually I can sense when wheelspin is about to occur, and also give the system time to detect it and take appropriate measure... Also if 55% throttle breaks traction and I am at 60% throttle, it will be much easier for the TC computer to just retard some timing or back off 5% trottle than it would be for it to deal with me being at 100% throttle.
Another obvious way of dealing with this is by improving the amount of traction the system has to work with; if I got much wider and stickier tires the TC system wouldn't have such a large torque vs traction differential to deal with...
But what if I could reprogram the Traction control system's tables to make it more agressive? What if I could fine tune it EXACTLY for my setup?
Could I run different TC maps per gear?
With enough experimentation it would be possible to determine how much throttle the tires can take in each gear and have the TC go right there... Done right, this would allow me to hold the gas to the floor and let TC provide the maximum amount of torque the tires could hold... And if anything odd happened (bumps, dirt, etc), wheelspin would be easily remedied because the car would be on the edge of traction; not 200ft-lbs beyond it...
Cars like the BMW M3 come stock with launch control that performs a very similar function.... It seems like the Corvette already has all the hardware in it, so why can't we make it work better?
Or for that matter why doesn't the factory TC work better? My only guess is that the computer clock speed controlling is not fast enough to keep up with the rapidly changing conditions as wheelspin occurs, so the system is always "chasing its own tail", trying to make adjustments in comparatively sparse time segments and then having to wait to see if they worked...
Does anyone know? Any thoughts or ideas here?
Melting Slicks
Joined: May 2006
Posts: 2,891
Likes: 1
From: NJ..."the way I saw it, everyone takes a beating sometimes."
In HP-Tuners what are the settings to control TC? Are there settings to change the different parameters or does it just give you an on/off option. When people discuss tuning out the torque management they usually only mention programming in a higher than acheivable torque number so that the system doesn't kick on. How, and is the TC tied in with TM? Are their different rpm windows that you can reprogram? I don't have HPT so I wouldn't know if and how things could be altered. I would think if this is a possibility it would have been tried by someone by now. I know there is an extremely expensive TC system used by professional race teams that a few members have used to piggy-back the stock system and it can be programmed for various speeds, rpms, power, etc. like you mentioned. Like I said though it's very expensive. As far as reprogramming the stock system.....?
Thread Starter
Le Mans Master
Joined: Oct 2007
Posts: 6,149
Likes: 11
From: Greater Detroit Metro MI, when I'm not travelling.
In HP-Tuners what are the settings to control TC? Are there settings to change the different parameters or does it just give you an on/off option. When people discuss tuning out the torque management they usually only mention programming in a higher than acheivable torque number so that the system doesn't kick on. How, and is the TC tied in with TM? Are their different rpm windows that you can reprogram? I don't have HPT so I wouldn't know if and how things could be altered. I would think if this is a possibility it would have been tried by someone by now. I know there is an extremely expensive TC system used by professional race teams that a few members have used to piggy-back the stock system and it can be programmed for various speeds, rpms, power, etc. like you mentioned. Like I said though it's very expensive. As far as reprogramming the stock system.....?
I believe there is a traction control MODULE which is separate from the ECU, and which, incidentally, was made by Delphi until 2008 and is now sourced from BOSH for 2009+ Corvettes... Can anyone confirm?
Melting Slicks
Joined: Jul 2008
Posts: 2,014
Likes: 2
St. Jude Donor '09-'10
Great Question!
Very interesting! I have been thinking th exact same thing. I wnoder if some of the more advanced shops have ever made any attempts at this. I would definitely pay the $$$ to have mine adjusted. Traction control is such a great concept but I have found that my FI 650 + RWHP does not accellerate "well" when I nail it, ie. it tends to know not what to do, sputtering and such. I was told this is exactly tied to traction control. My car never reacts this way with TC off.
Here is something I have been thinking about for a while...
The Corvette has a very advanced Traction control system. The vehicle monitors the speed of the front wheels vs the rear wheels via the ABS sensors, and is able to tell the exact moment when wheel spin occurs, and how much wheel spin is occuring.
Once that happens, a protocol is started. I don't know the specific details, but the basics of it are that it will first begin to pull ignition timing, making the engine lose some power. There is a limit to how much timing can be pulled, and if this is not sucessful in eliminating wheelspin, the ECU will then begin closing the throttle plate. This usually does the trick. Once traction is found, the ECU opens the throttle plate gradually and restores target ignition timing.
It is a very advanced and very clever system, and theoretically it provides the ECU with complete and absolute control over engine power and thus wheelspin. And I applaud GM for programming it for a sportscar; even on a bone stock car I was able to break traction and slide the back end of the car around some before the system intervened. Similar systems in other cars (BMW / Mercedes / VW) freak out and cut ALL power the instant your tires break traction. I drove a Lexus that felt like the car had sank into mud the moment you begun sliding.
But it is not perfect, as evidenced by the fact that any halfway decent driver will post considerably better times in any kind of racing with the system OFF.
The real problem is when you mod the car to make VAST amounts of horsepower over what it had before, the protocol becomes somewhat... Uneffective. With a supercharger and 600RWHP, I can leave traction control ON and still smoke the tires right into the rev limiter. I can spin DONUTS with T/C on! Obviously, if the tires have enough traction for, say, 300ft-lbs of torque, and the engine makes 500ft-lbs, no amount of ignition timing retard will stop wheelspin.
What I have leaned is that by getting on the gas gradually I can sense when wheelspin is about to occur, and also give the system time to detect it and take appropriate measure... Also if 55% throttle breaks traction and I am at 60% throttle, it will be much easier for the TC computer to just retard some timing or back off 5% trottle than it would be for it to deal with me being at 100% throttle.
Another obvious way of dealing with this is by improving the amount of traction the system has to work with; if I got much wider and stickier tires the TC system wouldn't have such a large torque vs traction differential to deal with...
But what if I could reprogram the Traction control system's tables to make it more agressive? What if I could fine tune it EXACTLY for my setup?
Could I run different TC maps per gear?
With enough experimentation it would be possible to determine how much throttle the tires can take in each gear and have the TC go right there... Done right, this would allow me to hold the gas to the floor and let TC provide the maximum amount of torque the tires could hold... And if anything odd happened (bumps, dirt, etc), wheelspin would be easily remedied because the car would be on the edge of traction; not 200ft-lbs beyond it...
Cars like the BMW M3 come stock with launch control that performs a very similar function.... It seems like the Corvette already has all the hardware in it, so why can't we make it work better?
Or for that matter why doesn't the factory TC work better? My only guess is that the computer clock speed controlling is not fast enough to keep up with the rapidly changing conditions as wheelspin occurs, so the system is always "chasing its own tail", trying to make adjustments in comparatively sparse time segments and then having to wait to see if they worked...
Does anyone know? Any thoughts or ideas here?
The Corvette has a very advanced Traction control system. The vehicle monitors the speed of the front wheels vs the rear wheels via the ABS sensors, and is able to tell the exact moment when wheel spin occurs, and how much wheel spin is occuring.
Once that happens, a protocol is started. I don't know the specific details, but the basics of it are that it will first begin to pull ignition timing, making the engine lose some power. There is a limit to how much timing can be pulled, and if this is not sucessful in eliminating wheelspin, the ECU will then begin closing the throttle plate. This usually does the trick. Once traction is found, the ECU opens the throttle plate gradually and restores target ignition timing.
It is a very advanced and very clever system, and theoretically it provides the ECU with complete and absolute control over engine power and thus wheelspin. And I applaud GM for programming it for a sportscar; even on a bone stock car I was able to break traction and slide the back end of the car around some before the system intervened. Similar systems in other cars (BMW / Mercedes / VW) freak out and cut ALL power the instant your tires break traction. I drove a Lexus that felt like the car had sank into mud the moment you begun sliding.
But it is not perfect, as evidenced by the fact that any halfway decent driver will post considerably better times in any kind of racing with the system OFF.
The real problem is when you mod the car to make VAST amounts of horsepower over what it had before, the protocol becomes somewhat... Uneffective. With a supercharger and 600RWHP, I can leave traction control ON and still smoke the tires right into the rev limiter. I can spin DONUTS with T/C on! Obviously, if the tires have enough traction for, say, 300ft-lbs of torque, and the engine makes 500ft-lbs, no amount of ignition timing retard will stop wheelspin.
What I have leaned is that by getting on the gas gradually I can sense when wheelspin is about to occur, and also give the system time to detect it and take appropriate measure... Also if 55% throttle breaks traction and I am at 60% throttle, it will be much easier for the TC computer to just retard some timing or back off 5% trottle than it would be for it to deal with me being at 100% throttle.
Another obvious way of dealing with this is by improving the amount of traction the system has to work with; if I got much wider and stickier tires the TC system wouldn't have such a large torque vs traction differential to deal with...
But what if I could reprogram the Traction control system's tables to make it more agressive? What if I could fine tune it EXACTLY for my setup?
Could I run different TC maps per gear?
With enough experimentation it would be possible to determine how much throttle the tires can take in each gear and have the TC go right there... Done right, this would allow me to hold the gas to the floor and let TC provide the maximum amount of torque the tires could hold... And if anything odd happened (bumps, dirt, etc), wheelspin would be easily remedied because the car would be on the edge of traction; not 200ft-lbs beyond it...
Cars like the BMW M3 come stock with launch control that performs a very similar function.... It seems like the Corvette already has all the hardware in it, so why can't we make it work better?
Or for that matter why doesn't the factory TC work better? My only guess is that the computer clock speed controlling is not fast enough to keep up with the rapidly changing conditions as wheelspin occurs, so the system is always "chasing its own tail", trying to make adjustments in comparatively sparse time segments and then having to wait to see if they worked...
Does anyone know? Any thoughts or ideas here?
Team Owner
Joined: Sep 2003
Posts: 43,084
Likes: 33
From: Raleigh / Rolesville NC
Go for it. Many ppl would like that.
Guys that do road track days, need this too.
Driving though a high speed corner, and TC comes on and slows the car down and is a real danger.
On the C5 with TC turned OFF the car will slide just slightly though the corner with a bit of rear wheel spin. That is Good. The C6s even with TC turned OFF will not slide though corners.
I am not talkind drifting just a very slight slide sideways as the car moves and accelerates forward.
Tires have their greatest grip just as the rubber starts to melt from heat and a slight slide.
There are programmable TC units on the market, but do not know how these would work on the stock C6 computer system
So I say Go 4 It.
Guys that do road track days, need this too.
Driving though a high speed corner, and TC comes on and slows the car down and is a real danger.
On the C5 with TC turned OFF the car will slide just slightly though the corner with a bit of rear wheel spin. That is Good. The C6s even with TC turned OFF will not slide though corners.
I am not talkind drifting just a very slight slide sideways as the car moves and accelerates forward.
Tires have their greatest grip just as the rubber starts to melt from heat and a slight slide.
There are programmable TC units on the market, but do not know how these would work on the stock C6 computer system
So I say Go 4 It.
Heel & Toe
Joined: Oct 2008
Posts: 21
Likes: 0
From: Richmond VA
It has been done, but there is a catch. You have to have the GM software to do this. There is a certain grassroots race team out of MI that has very close ties with GM engineering and he has the ability to do this. When explained to me the HP Tuners, LS2 edit and EFI Live don't even scratch the surface of what the GM program can. Like I said, though good luck getting it. I am trying to get them to hook me up with the new traction and ABS setup in a stand alone system right now that they are running in the race car. I will let you know how I fair in this, but unless you know someone within I doubt you are going to crack this one but good luck and keep us informed.
Le Mans Master
Joined: Aug 2002
Posts: 8,472
Likes: 38
From: Houston TX
St. Jude Donor '11
Your best bet would be to play with the ETC% VS: Engine Torque table. You could log the ETC%, calculated torque and TC parameters and, with much testing, build a table that would only allow the ETC to open enough to just stay under the tire spin point. Trouble is, this will change with differing road conditions, temperatures and tire conditions, but this may get you close enough that the TC could have a chance to do something instead of being outmatched by the power. By default, TC will use spark and ETC limiting to achieve what it things is the correct amount of power reduction. I haven't seen an ETC VS: Torque reduction table but there is a spark retard VS: torque reduction table which tells the PCM how much torque reduction to expect from retarding the spark by different amounts. Playing with this should control how much the car nosedives in response to wheelspin.
I would say that it "can" be done but it would be very tedious.
I would say that it "can" be done but it would be very tedious.
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Melting Slicks
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 2,007
Likes: 1
From: Eastern PA:ECS Paxton Novi 1500(676rwhp,585tq on stock engine),LG headers, 410's, Corsa Sports, ECS Alky Kit
St. Jude Donor '08-'09
I read up on this system today on their website, wow, it is really slick. LG is also building a plug and play module for it also to make it easy to install (its not available yet). The RaceLogic system has launch control built in, along with "no lift" shifting. It lists for $1800, which isnt too offensive compared to a lot of the other things on the vette. I bet that at $1000 they wouldnt be able to keep them on the shelf though.
