[BigdaddyCaddyCTSV]

So when I purchased my 2013 CTS V the default position for Stabilitrak and Traction Control was on. I recently have my car repaired and the traction control default is now off and when I click the steering wheel control traction control will briefly turn on but when I check it in a few minutes it goes back to being off. Unlike the Stabilitrak there is no light to tell me that it is in the default off position when I start the car. I just want to make sure that I am able to use it under normal driving conditions. Please let me know if any of you have experienced this and if so what did you do to have Traction Control automatically turn on when the car is started?

 

[Blown376]

Traction control will always default to fully enabled every time the car is started. I always have to double click to get it into competition mode when I start the car. As far as I know, there wasn't a way to change this so that it would be a permanent default to anything other than "fully enabled".

 

[RobF300]

keep in mind when you push the button it wakes it up, meaning when you hit the button its not going INTO traction control, its showing what mode its currently in

unless you have the dash saying its off- trust me its on when you start the car

 

[Phlip77]

This doesn't sound to me like it's off by default, but rather there's an issue that is turning it off (ie wheel speed sensor, etc).
The fact that you mention turning it back on but it turns itself off after a few minutes, seems to back that up.

 

[RobF300]

i think it would also say service stabilitrack not just shut it down

 

[RocketSled]

Start it up, stomp the gas, dump the clutch (or hole-shot it in to drive if it's an automatic). If you get a nice smoky burnout then TC is indeed off by default. If you don't, the issue is "operator error".

 

[BigdaddyCaddyCTSV]

Ok. Thanks for the Feedback. I will look further into to this soon.

 

[Teh V]

I'd love to have everything off on start up. Would save me from having to hold the TC button for 10 seconds. #firstworldproblems

 

[RobF300]

i bet if you HAD to turn it on there would be a lot more in the scrap yard

 

[chibajoe]

Start it up, stomp the gas, dump the clutch (or hole-shot it in to drive if it's an automatic). If you get a nice smoky burnout then TC is indeed off by default. If you don't, the issue is "operator error".

A properly running V should have no issues spinning the tires without having to do anything other than stepping into the throttle.

 

[Fxstc1995]

I was hating my V for a while because every time I would try to take off it would go into protective mode and fall on it's face. The couple of clicks putting it in competition mode made a huge difference, much more fun. Yes, I was still spinning some but having much more fun doing it and grabbing/accelerating a lot quicker. I wish there were a way to set that as default.

 

[chibajoe]

I was hating my V for a while because every time I would try to take off it would go into protective mode and fall on it's face. The couple of clicks putting it in competition mode made a huge difference, much more fun. Yes, I was still spinning some but having much more fun doing it and grabbing/accelerating a lot quicker. I wish there were a way to set that as default.

Check your tire sizes. There was a really informative thread on here about how the stability control works, and IIRC it's basically that it calculates the rotational acceleration (or maybe velocity?) between the front and rear tires. The take away was that bigger rear tires allow more slippage before the fun police shut it all down.

 

[RocketSled]

A properly running V should have no issues spinning the tires without having to do anything other than stepping into the throttle.

Well, no. You have to turn TC off for that to happen. Otherwise you get a lame little chirp and the power gets pulled by TC and there is no luscious smoky burnout.

There was a really informative thread on here about how the stability control works

It's pretty simple in concept - TC compares the rate of rotation of the "front axle" (I don't know if it averages the wheel speeds together or does some other mathematical convolution) to the rate of rotation of each back tire. If a back tire is spinning faster than the front axle, that tire is assumed to have lost traction and TC engages to deal with it. So if you make a tire change that reduces the diameter of the rear tire (or increases the diameter of the fronts), the back wheels are turning faster than the fronts even without a tire losing traction. There's some "margin", the TC lets the back tires spin a bit, it doesn't engage instantaneously. So when you make tire diameter changes you can end up consuming that "margin", the result of which is that TC will appear to be more sensitive and engage more easily. It was a huge issue with C5 Corvettes because the front wheel diameter was quite a bit smaller than the rears (17" rim front vs. 18" back). People who didn't know better mounted fatter, lower profile tires out back, or they went to 18" front wheels, and ended up with a big enough delta in relative rates of rotation that TC would engage the moment the car started to move and the only way to drive the car was to disable TC before you tried... And yeah, understanding this you can "game the system". I did with my 02 Z06. I changed the stagger so the relative size of the rear wheels was a little bigger and that made the rear wheels look like they were turning slower - adding margin. The result was that I could leave TC on all the time and still put the car in to a drift and keep it there without TC thinking it had to act.

 

[RocketSled]

This guy should have left Traction Control turned on...

 

[loweredd]

Dang! I wasn't expecting THAT. That was some bad luck, there!

 

[mememe123]

That sucks. Speaking of TC, I wish we could tune ours so it would turn back on, at lets say +/- 60mph... would be dope, do a burnout, take off, and don't have to worry about spinning out.. same for rolls, set it to 70 and you are also good 🤔
Oh yeah, and I want my stiff steering with TC on... like wtf, why have they not thought about it?

 

[Blades1_99]

This guy should have left Traction Control turned on...

So what happened here?

 

[RocketSled]

It's clear from the in-car forward facing video that the guy stomped it hard coming out of a corner, lost traction, and spun the car around. As it slid off the track it was tripped by the transition to dirt and flipped over. If he hadn't disabled TC, it wouldn't have happened. The guy clearly had the right skills, he's countersteering like crazy as soon as the car starts to fishtail. But apparently not enough skills to have avoided going too deep in to the throttle...

 

[loweredd]

It looked like all slicks in the upside down pictures, and they must have been pretty cold too, compounding the problem but he hit the front corner in the worst possible spot, too. Kinda like in fail videos where one car hits another at super slow speeds in JUST the right way to flip it right over. WORST case scenario.

 

[Blades1_99]

It's clear from the in-car forward facing video that the guy stomped it hard coming out of a corner, lost traction, and spun the car around. As it slid off the track it was tripped by the transition to dirt and flipped over. If he hadn't disabled TC, it wouldn't have happened. The guy clearly had the right skills, he's countersteering like crazy as soon as the car starts to fishtail. But apparently not enough skills to have avoided going too deep in to the throttle...

I couldn't tell he "stomped" on it, but it was I was thinking along with the cold tires below.

It looked like all slicks in the upside down pictures, and they must have been pretty cold too, compounding the problem but he hit the front corner in the worst possible spot, too. Kinda like in fail videos where one car hits another at super slow speeds in JUST the right way to flip it right over. WORST case scenario.

I was thinking about the cold tires and tracks.