ABS, TCS and ESP.
ABS or anti lock-braking system, works to prevent braking lockup. when you brake so hard that your wheels stop spinning and start to slide, your braking performance goes down. ABS monitors for brake lockup and when it happens it will jam the brakes on and off very quickly to try to regain traction while at the same time slowing you down as quickly as possible.
TCS or traction control system monitors wheel spin under acceleration and depending on the system will either route power to the wheels that still have traction or will even cut engine power to keep them from spinning.
ESP or Electronic stability control is a system that monitors for skids and spins and tries to correct them by applying the brakes on individual wheels.
most modern cars come with ABS and traction control and ESP is still a bit more of a premium feature. in many cars you can turn off traction control and in some with ESP you can also turn it off but to disable ABS you need to unplug the fuse that enables it.
by turning off traction control, the car's systems will not interfere with engine power. this means that if you try to do a power slide, you can because you can keep accelerating to get the tail of the car to swing around (only in a RWD car) had it been on the system would have noticed that the wheels were spinning because of acceleration and cut power keeping you from finishing the slide the way you want to.
in many systems, when you turn off traction control, it isn't truly off. the sensors are still working away noticing when you are sliding it's just that the program to cut power won't work. in my dad's old mercedes you could turn off traction control and the light would stay solid yellow and flash when the car was sliding just like when the system was on and you started sliding. the only difference was that with traction control on, i wasnt able to do donuts or powerslides but with it off, i could.
the flashing is just there to let the driver know what is going on since computers can detect wheel spin much faster than people can. a dedicated sensor is much faster than the sensitivity from your butt.
Its more than likely in Performance mode. you can disable them or turn it to performance mode. But most car manufactures have the light stay on or flash as a way to get out of any potential law suits so it is telling you its disabled.
So if you cause an accident & try to blame it on the car manufacture for faulty equipment, they can plug in their computers & look at the little black box & see that the driver manually turned off the traction control & now the lawsuit is now on the driver since the car did exactly what the driver commanded
Cadillacs have it where you press it twice & you pretty much can drift, peel out or whatever you want to do
You answered the questions I was about to ask as well; what ABS, TCS, and ESP were. Thank you so much for the help as I won't feel embarrassed asking my friend anymore. So having the light solid yellow before the slide, flashing during the slide, and solid yellow again after the slide is normal? The flashing is an indicator that the car is sliding and not under normal control?
Why don't he show u how to fix it.
My friend took me out in his BMW 335i and turned off his traction control. He just got the car and wanted to show me what it can do. He's a mechanic and has had many project cars. So this was my first time in a RWD car and he power slid on a turn. The traction control light started flashing and that's what I'm confused about. I meant to ask him but I don't have his number to do so. I'm new to cars and I'm curious on the light flashing. Does it flash to let the driver know he/she is sliding and doesn't have complete control? Hope someone can help and teach me these things!
