Racelogic traction control
Discussion
..is being fitted as I write this. Should hav eit back by Monday.
I just figured that it was worth spending the £2000+ so that my £50000+ car has a better chance of not ending up going backwards through a hedge!
The system looks very adjustable and the guy fitting it said they did an open day with some Ferrari 355s at a track and said that they set the 'slip' (adjustable from the cabin) so that the cars held massive power slides all through the corners with the throttle flat. He reckoned that the before and after showed an improved lap time of about 2 seconds for EVERY driver!
I'll let you know next week!!
I just figured that it was worth spending the £2000+ so that my £50000+ car has a better chance of not ending up going backwards through a hedge!
The system looks very adjustable and the guy fitting it said they did an open day with some Ferrari 355s at a track and said that they set the 'slip' (adjustable from the cabin) so that the cars held massive power slides all through the corners with the throttle flat. He reckoned that the before and after showed an improved lap time of about 2 seconds for EVERY driver!
I'll let you know next week!!
Car still in PTS in Luton for the fitting. They were the only company that Racelogic would recommend because they had experience of the fitting of the wheel speed sensors etc (normally the system uses the cars existing ABS sensors).
Unfortunately they have had my car since Friday last week and despite saying that it would be 2 days I have had to chase 3 times. On Monday I was told "Tuesday", on Tuesday I was told "Thursday" and I called today (Thursday) and was told "maybe Friday"!!!!!........hardly impressive.
I have vented my anger at them as I am pissed off with having to drive a non Tuscan, hopefully my ranting will have persuaded them to at least have it ready for tomorrow.
The problem is that they are a company that are used to dealing with Nova boys wanting a hot cam fitted or someone wanting to double the boost on their 10 year old Fiat Uno. I guess that as I have got older I have become less tolerant of such poor service.
I just hope that the system works!
Watch this space...............
Unfortunately they have had my car since Friday last week and despite saying that it would be 2 days I have had to chase 3 times. On Monday I was told "Tuesday", on Tuesday I was told "Thursday" and I called today (Thursday) and was told "maybe Friday"!!!!!........hardly impressive.
I have vented my anger at them as I am pissed off with having to drive a non Tuscan, hopefully my ranting will have persuaded them to at least have it ready for tomorrow.
The problem is that they are a company that are used to dealing with Nova boys wanting a hot cam fitted or someone wanting to double the boost on their 10 year old Fiat Uno. I guess that as I have got older I have become less tolerant of such poor service.
I just hope that the system works!
Watch this space...............
Finally got the car back after 1 1/2 weeks!
Noticed from the mileage that the Agent had travelled 0.1 miles! I therefore insisted on a roadtest before paying. This revealed that the system was initially fine and then suddenly the car was undrivable.
I had to turn the traction control off to be able to return to the agent. They then inspected the car and found that one of the sensors had come into contact with the drive shaft bolts (from which is 'reads') and had broken. I couldn't wait any longer so took the car home with the promise that they would send a replacement (just goes to prove that roadtests are imperative).
My mechanic was shocked to find that the rear bracket were made out of what can only be described at mechano! He fabricated some rigid aluminium brackets and replaced them.
The system is excellent although it does 'hunt' a little a speed when the throttle is flat and the wheels are not spinning. I think that is something to do with the difference in size between the front and back wheels.
The system interfaces with a laptop via a serial interface and some racelogic software. I think that it needs better setting up as most of the settings appear to be the defaults. Thing is, I don't know where to start! - Not quite what I had in mind but you live and learn!
Anyway, the system is generally excellent. Launch control (for which I paid extra) is useless but to be fair I haven't set it up at all. The systems is quite unobtrusive and certainly doesn't cut all power like other sytems I've used. It allows a certain degree of spin (it is adjustable from a dash mounted switch) and then cuts the fuelling one at a time (all in the blink of an eye of course!).
1st and 2nd gear acceleration is ballistic!! and once you get your mind round the fact that you can apply full throttle out of a corner it is a real eye opener!
In practice though I find that I use the throttle exactly as I always did but every now and then the system cuts in as a 'safety net' and saves my bacon, especially in the wet and on notoriously fuel soaked corners (near a garage and on a long sweep to the M25!).
You can turn it off on a switch or allow different degrees of slip and the 'controlled' powerslides are quite spectacular.
I'd reccomend it to anyone but would definitely not reccomend the agent that fitted it to my car.
I'm on a track day in LLandow tomorrow so that will be an excellent test!
I
Noticed from the mileage that the Agent had travelled 0.1 miles! I therefore insisted on a roadtest before paying. This revealed that the system was initially fine and then suddenly the car was undrivable.
I had to turn the traction control off to be able to return to the agent. They then inspected the car and found that one of the sensors had come into contact with the drive shaft bolts (from which is 'reads') and had broken. I couldn't wait any longer so took the car home with the promise that they would send a replacement (just goes to prove that roadtests are imperative).
My mechanic was shocked to find that the rear bracket were made out of what can only be described at mechano! He fabricated some rigid aluminium brackets and replaced them.
The system is excellent although it does 'hunt' a little a speed when the throttle is flat and the wheels are not spinning. I think that is something to do with the difference in size between the front and back wheels.
The system interfaces with a laptop via a serial interface and some racelogic software. I think that it needs better setting up as most of the settings appear to be the defaults. Thing is, I don't know where to start! - Not quite what I had in mind but you live and learn!
Anyway, the system is generally excellent. Launch control (for which I paid extra) is useless but to be fair I haven't set it up at all. The systems is quite unobtrusive and certainly doesn't cut all power like other sytems I've used. It allows a certain degree of spin (it is adjustable from a dash mounted switch) and then cuts the fuelling one at a time (all in the blink of an eye of course!).
1st and 2nd gear acceleration is ballistic!! and once you get your mind round the fact that you can apply full throttle out of a corner it is a real eye opener!
In practice though I find that I use the throttle exactly as I always did but every now and then the system cuts in as a 'safety net' and saves my bacon, especially in the wet and on notoriously fuel soaked corners (near a garage and on a long sweep to the M25!).
You can turn it off on a switch or allow different degrees of slip and the 'controlled' powerslides are quite spectacular.
I'd reccomend it to anyone but would definitely not reccomend the agent that fitted it to my car.
I'm on a track day in LLandow tomorrow so that will be an excellent test!
I
Thanks Nick!!! Yes he was surprised to say the least.
It barely stopped raiing all day and I though that if this wasn't going to test it then what would. My brother had brought his 320bhp Suburu STI lightweight and he and I was the fastest things on the circuit, lapping to withing a tenth or so of each other.
Talk about different ways to skin a cat, the scooby was all about understeer and just planting your foot when you could, the Tuscan still oversteered a bit but it was so easy to control with the traction control (still put my heart in my mouth every time though!), had much better turn in, was generally neutral but had much worse feel through the brake pedal (something that I have never noticed on the road) and it was easy to lock a front wheel and not notice - until you ploughed straight on at the corner of course.
The system just needs fine tuning on the settings as it was hunting a bit under full power, even when the traction control had stopped doing its thing.
It was nice to be quicker than all those cars when on a short (50 secondish) circuit with a very small straight (115 mph in 3rd!!!) AND in the wet I would have expected the Tuscan to be eaten alive by the bike engined Westfields, Caterhams, BMW M5, Honda NSX and even a formula ford. However, the reality was that even though the traction control did do it's thing the car was just so well sorted and so quick in the corners that it simply took my breath away.
It barely stopped raiing all day and I though that if this wasn't going to test it then what would. My brother had brought his 320bhp Suburu STI lightweight and he and I was the fastest things on the circuit, lapping to withing a tenth or so of each other.
Talk about different ways to skin a cat, the scooby was all about understeer and just planting your foot when you could, the Tuscan still oversteered a bit but it was so easy to control with the traction control (still put my heart in my mouth every time though!), had much better turn in, was generally neutral but had much worse feel through the brake pedal (something that I have never noticed on the road) and it was easy to lock a front wheel and not notice - until you ploughed straight on at the corner of course.
The system just needs fine tuning on the settings as it was hunting a bit under full power, even when the traction control had stopped doing its thing.
It was nice to be quicker than all those cars when on a short (50 secondish) circuit with a very small straight (115 mph in 3rd!!!) AND in the wet I would have expected the Tuscan to be eaten alive by the bike engined Westfields, Caterhams, BMW M5, Honda NSX and even a formula ford. However, the reality was that even though the traction control did do it's thing the car was just so well sorted and so quick in the corners that it simply took my breath away.
I think I've set my picture to public now, not totally sure though!
Try this link:
www.picman.co.uk
Loads of photos from the trackday (Pick LLandow 8th March, my reg is M11 SDN)...much better than the ones that I took with my digi camera (it was bl**dy cold!).
For details of the costs it is best to go to www.racelogic.co.uk as they have a PDF pricelist in the TC section. I have the invoice at work but as I remember it was something like:
ECU - £750
wheel speed sensors - £250
Launch contol (not necessary but fun) - £100
all plus VAT
The fitting was where I had some problems (see above)but essentially it cost me about another £1000+vat to fit it (not very well) but this may vary from agent to agent. However, the agent that I used were to only ones that Racelogic said could fit it where the car did not have ABS fitted. I actually now believe that the sensors are not difficult, it is how the system interacts with the car's ECU and fuel injectors that looks complicated. Therefore, if I was doing it again I would get the sensors fitted by a competant mechanic and then take the system to another Racelogic agent to have the balance of the kit fitted in and set up.
Go on.......you know you want to!!!
Try this link:
www.picman.co.uk
Loads of photos from the trackday (Pick LLandow 8th March, my reg is M11 SDN)...much better than the ones that I took with my digi camera (it was bl**dy cold!).
For details of the costs it is best to go to www.racelogic.co.uk as they have a PDF pricelist in the TC section. I have the invoice at work but as I remember it was something like:
ECU - £750
wheel speed sensors - £250
Launch contol (not necessary but fun) - £100
all plus VAT
The fitting was where I had some problems (see above)but essentially it cost me about another £1000+vat to fit it (not very well) but this may vary from agent to agent. However, the agent that I used were to only ones that Racelogic said could fit it where the car did not have ABS fitted. I actually now believe that the sensors are not difficult, it is how the system interacts with the car's ECU and fuel injectors that looks complicated. Therefore, if I was doing it again I would get the sensors fitted by a competant mechanic and then take the system to another Racelogic agent to have the balance of the kit fitted in and set up.
Go on.......you know you want to!!!
The white scooby was my brothers and I drove that quite a lot on the day too. It was very difficult jumping from one to the other and he was the only person to spin my car on the day too.
Basically with the scooby you don't have to think about anything, just get in plant your foot, wait for the understeer to fade out and then you off, next corner the same thing etc etc. It was very competant but a little boring. In the Tuscan you had no understeer so you could carry more speed out of the corner and obviously it was much faster on the straight (especially with TC) but it was under braking that the scooby had an advantage. The 4WD really stopped any kind of lock up but in reality I think that the Tuscan only suffered in this department cos it was wet; in the dry it would have pissed all over it!
My brother was travelling on the straight much faster than he had been used to in his scooby, braked at the same point (going 20mph faster)and slotted second........next thing he was in the infield!!! I was behind him and was waiting for a crunch! You really had to heal and toe on the down changes or you really upset the balance of the Tuscan. I had adjusted the pedals so that they were perfectly positioned.
Racelogic won't do fitments where there are no ABS sensors. PTS in Luton were the only company that they recommended. I asked for any other agent but they genuinely said there was none.
It might seem quite a lot but how much is your car or your life worth??? You must remember that it would be very easy to transport the system to another car (TVR?), even if it is already fitted with TC as this system is much much better than most manufacturer systems that I have tried.
I don't think I have hydratrak (mine is a Red Rose but I don't think is was std) but found the std one to be fantastic with virtually no slip whatsoever.
Launch control is not necessary but it is fun!!
Basically with the scooby you don't have to think about anything, just get in plant your foot, wait for the understeer to fade out and then you off, next corner the same thing etc etc. It was very competant but a little boring. In the Tuscan you had no understeer so you could carry more speed out of the corner and obviously it was much faster on the straight (especially with TC) but it was under braking that the scooby had an advantage. The 4WD really stopped any kind of lock up but in reality I think that the Tuscan only suffered in this department cos it was wet; in the dry it would have pissed all over it!
My brother was travelling on the straight much faster than he had been used to in his scooby, braked at the same point (going 20mph faster)and slotted second........next thing he was in the infield!!! I was behind him and was waiting for a crunch! You really had to heal and toe on the down changes or you really upset the balance of the Tuscan. I had adjusted the pedals so that they were perfectly positioned.
Racelogic won't do fitments where there are no ABS sensors. PTS in Luton were the only company that they recommended. I asked for any other agent but they genuinely said there was none.
It might seem quite a lot but how much is your car or your life worth??? You must remember that it would be very easy to transport the system to another car (TVR?), even if it is already fitted with TC as this system is much much better than most manufacturer systems that I have tried.
I don't think I have hydratrak (mine is a Red Rose but I don't think is was std) but found the std one to be fantastic with virtually no slip whatsoever.
Launch control is not necessary but it is fun!!
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