Traction control (long and sorta related to Software Dyno)

[Scott Knight]

Grumpy,

Uh oh, another wordy post on the way...

> Gee, dismiss ideas before even thinking about, them, why post?.
> Did you see the logic in the cyl sel?.
> Never mind you made your mind up.
> IF all you want to do is waste someones time, why not be up front and say that.
> Sorta long, and of no value.
> Grumpy, and getting more so

Well, I was actually trying to generate discussion on a couple of other
ideas rather than the traditional one.  I personally have many years of
racing experience with the dropped spark and don't care for the
results.  I do see the merit in the adjustability of such a system, but
would REALLY like to explore something a little less damaging to the
engine and a little more driver friendly.  It's acceptable in a racecar
that gets torn down on schedule and is easy to work on.  If I build a
car as a driver, I don't want something like the traction control system
to be taking huge amounts of life out of the engine when alternate
schemes are possibly available.  logically, it seems a drive by wire
system that attenuates the throttle opening HAS to be less damaging to a
high powered engine than cutting the spark.  If the car were
turbocharged, taking away boost with a controllable wastegate SEEMS to
be a good solution on the surface.

Another reason: how to you throttle back the power on a nitrous engine
without destroying it?  Cutting spark?  I don't want to be the one to
try it.  Cutting fuel?  Definitely not.  How about a system that will
'slow down' the nitrous system delivery?  It HAS to be possible.

That said, I honestly don't understand the systems that were being used
in F1 a few years back (until they were banned).  I do know that the
cars all sounded like they had cylinders pulled out and these were teams
with seemingly unlimited budgets.  Maybe they had a better cylinder
cutting scheme than I can imagine...but then again, maybe their engines
only have to last one race and they have very sophisticated cam drives
and distributorless ignition systems that aren't affected by rattling
the titanium crankshaft so much <G>.

THAT ALL said, what I am thinking is that some of the newer ECMs that GM
is using control transmission, AC, and probably some other things on
cars I haven't looked at, could have the, say, the transmission control
drivers reassigned to traction control duties.  Realizing that I have no
experience yet with these things, I am asking the group I consider to be
a collective of thinking gurus if they think it is possible.  Here is
how I think: if an ECM can control an IAC motor in a feedback loop, why
not a wastegate or throttle control system?  Seems like a good idea to
me.

One day, I WILL make a traction control system, whether it is by
modifying an existing GMECM or building a bolt-on system from scratch. 
It is a pet project and we all know how they can get a life of their
own.  I have just pondered the architecture of this for a while now and
am excited that the newer PCMs have so much available functionality. 
Unfortunately, I don't understand the logistics of making it happen
right now and want a quick samity check.

Hopefully, even though this is almost as long as the first post, it is
slightly more useful...
-- 
Scott Knight  mailto:sknight at mich.com
http://www.mich.com/~sknight IRC:SS396man
'95 Black Impala SS
'94 Ducati 900SS CR