There's some Ice in the Seattle area, how does the TSC help me drive better in the bad weather. Also any suggestions on winter driving?

 

It doesnt. Make sure you have good tires, and they are properly inflated. Drive slower

 

Does the VSA (TL-S) helps in snow ? or is it also useless ?

 

Well. VSA will not help you drive better. Driving ability is dependant upon the driver. Thus as Fsttyms1 says, drive slower. If you're asking about does it help you grip the road... look below...

There's a common misconception about VSA. VSA is not necessarily some magical instrument that makes it so that your wheels grip to the road when driving. VSA/TSC/ESC/VDSC whatever you call it is intended to prevent "drive wheel slip." Drive wheel slip is when you accelerate and the tires don't get grip, and they just spin (often referred to as a burnout) VSA basically works by braking each individual wheel and limiting the actual power output to wheels to the vehicle's lateral movement/intended direction while under accelaration.

Thus Does VSA help in snow? Depends. If you're taking about being stopped at a red light, and you want to drive straight ahead. Sure it'll help. It'll help your car get grip faster if you punch your gas, than punching the gas in a car without VSA.

If you're talking about taking turns with VSA, no.

When approaching a corner at high speeds in snowy conditions what will happen is that you will turn the wheel, and instead of the front wheels gripping, they will begin to slide.

Problem with FWD cars is that when you turn your steering wheel to the right, since the road is slick, it's not taking the turn sharp enough and you instead end up going straight (massive understeer/fish tailing). I.E. You're going straight at 12 o'clock. You want to make a right turn at 3 o'clock. But because it's snowing, even if you turn the wheel enough to make it normally turn at 3 o'clock, your car will end up going towards anywhere bewteen 12-2 o'clock.

In a RWD car, you may experience the same as above or you can have the very opposite, massive over steer (plowing) depending on if you're accelerating or not. Either way your car will go forward (towards 12-2 o'clock) in this situation and your front end will/can be anywhere between 1 o'clock and 4-5 o'clock.

In both situations, the car will end up sliding forward instead of going toward the intended (right turn) direction. And in both situations, if you're going fast enough you may very well end up turning the car in complete circles if it's really icy and you're going really fast.

Now in either situation above if you're not accelerating, VSA will not go off.

Now in both situations if you are accelerating, VSA will begin to go off the minute you take the turn. The "!" light will flash, and VSA will blink back and forth. What will most likely happen is that power to the wheels will be reduced to approx. 10% or to even 0% and each wheel will be braked.

But see, the problem is that your car will still be sliding forward and not in the direction it's supposed to, in that case most likely the VSA will brake the wheels completely and will try to make the car regain it's lateral yaw.

So pretty much, if it's snowing/icy, in either RWD or FWD cars TSC/VSA does very little good in terms of helping your car grip the road.

Unless you have some super gripping tires... like I'm talking you have big spikey tires that literally eat through the snow and ice... Then you can take those turns and accelerate through them and you'd still have grip.

Now if you're talking about VDSC on a Subaru STI, yes it will help in snowing/icy conditions. AWD cars do benefit greatly from VDSC on slicker roads. Look at cars like the STI or EVO, those are made for rally racing (on dirt or snow). I could go into the dynamics of AWD cars and VDSC... but eh... not really worth mentioning since no one in here cares about Subarus or Mitsubishis.

Basically, in slick conditions, VSA will help you when you're accelerating in straight a line. But it will not help you when taking corners.

 

Thanks dude, nice info right there.

 

couldn't have explained it better myself...haha

 

I was suprised my TL handles fairly well in Alaska. I was worried, I came from a 4x4 truck with studded tires for the winter, no problems there. Now im in this FWD and got some blizzaks. TCS helps from stops, when its ice or snow on the ground(weve had snow for a while but its really just been below zero lately with ice) my tires will spin a bit from the stops but once im on the street its pretty smooth. I just gotta watch the speed and brake early, but im used to winter driving.

 

It helps to move the shifter to teh #2 position for starting as well. It will start teh car in 2nd and make it harder for the motor to spin the tires right away.