Ah, I hate the way traction control works in this car. It is the most aggressive system I have ever seen. It is constantly cutting power all the time! I just got owned by a crappy S4 because DSC was flashing like a christmas tree. I mean at first I was like "oh yeah, car is so powerful that's why", but my M5 never did it any of this. DSC on that car would only kick in if I were going WOT in 1st gear. That car has much more power and torque than the M3, so i dont get it.
I want to clarify, its 2nd to 3rd I am complaining about. 1st gear is utterly useless, but I wouldnt complain as much if 2nd gear worked fine.
Yes you can turn the traction control off, but I am never going to do that in public roads. MDM makes no difference in straightline acceleration scenarios, it allows more slip on drifting.
My take is, BMW made the DSC so aggressive to give room for improvement in competition package. I wish there was a way to tweak the parameters using an aftermarket tune.
By the way, launch control is almost always smokey burnout, but thats going to have its own thread.
Maybe I'm just overly sensitive due to this experience: we were driving on 94 from MSP to MKE in the left lane (a Taurus with my wife driving). A pickup carrying a huge camper suddenly moved into our lane - my wife glided left to avoid the collision and as soon as the tires hit dirt the car spun us down into median where we 180'd, shot us back up & across 3 packed lanes of 80mph traffic where we 180'd again and went back down into the median. 15 years later you can still see our tire marks on 94 and had this happened a little north or south we'd have plowed into trees or worse.
Anyway, that Taurus has no traction control - if it had we'd have probably just coasted to a stop or just merged back in with traffic.
EDIT: I should add that I drive with MDM on mostly as on the e9x it gives you some great tail action and is not intrusive in any way. I'm thinking the M4 might suck in this respect as I've heard this complaint a lot and seen it in videos
Most of the time the weather here is very fair and I feel I have more control over the vehicle without the nannies intervening. 6 years of driving this way with Greta has a constant smile on my face. I can do controlled tail action, break traction in three gears. Life is good.
I had my own episode on 99 going to Modesto. I'm in the #1 lane, it's raining pretty good, we go under an underpass and an RV in the #2 hit a big puddle of water, spraying it all over the front of my Buick Regal causing me to hydroplane. I'm headed to the center divider, counter steer, it whips back into the #1 lane and I proceed to do 3 360º turns across 4 lanes of traffic as I'm watching 2 big rigs flash before my eyes in the #3 and #4 lane.
Don't ask me how, but I wasn't struck by any vehicle even though I was in the ice plant pointing against traffic. Yep, had to change underwear that day.
Most of the time the weather here is very fair and I feel I have more control over the vehicle without the nannies intervening. 6 years of driving this way with Greta has a constant smile on my face. I can do controlled tail action, break traction in three gears. Life is good.
I had my own episode on 99 going to Modesto. I'm in the #1 lane, it's raining pretty good, we go under an underpass and an RV in the #2 hit a big puddle of water, spraying it all over the front of my Buick Regal causing me to hydroplane. I'm headed to the center divider, counter steer, it whips back into the #1 lane and I proceed to do 3 360º turns across 4 lanes of traffic as I'm watching 2 big rigs flash before my eyes in the #3 and #4 lane.
Don't ask me how, but I wasn't struck by any vehicle even though I was in the ice plant pointing against traffic. Yep, had to change underwear that day.
I'm gonna seem like I'm trolling here, but I'm really not.
I had an E90 335, now I drive a "crappy" S4. I've always wanted an M car and I'm considering replacing the S4 with the F80 M3. This thread makes me think twice though.
The cons of the S4 are it's heavier than the M3 and under steers. But it's hard to beat the AWD and torque vectoring sports diff when the roads are wet more than half the year hear in the pacific northwest. The S4 is a really great daily driver. It seems like the F80 M3 does have the potential to suffer from a lot of low RPM torque that would be hard to take advantage of if traction is at all limited by wet roads etc.
I don't want a track car, just a fun performance oriented sedan that will keep my commute spirited when I want it to be.
I'm gonna seem like I'm trolling here, but I'm really not.
I had an E90 335, now I drive a "crappy" S4. I've always wanted an M car and I'm considering replacing the S4 with the F80 M3. This thread makes me think twice though.
The cons of the S4 are it's heavier than the M3 and under steers. But it's hard to beat the AWD and torque vectoring sports diff when the roads are wet more than half the year hear in the pacific northwest. The S4 is a really great daily driver. It seems like the F80 M3 does have the potential to suffer from a lot of low RPM torque that would be hard to take advantage of if traction is at all limited by wet roads etc.
I don't want a track car, just a fun performance oriented sedan that will keep my commute spirited when I want it to be.
I can understand your reticence being where you are but same old adage, don't rely on hearsay and try to get hold of a test drive (preferably on a wet day which may not be so hard up there) and see for yourself. Best of luck in your choice and hoping you will be pleasantly surprised by the M4
The RWD car is so much fun, I mean to be able to slide the rear just a tad enough to have fun and that excitement, pretty much anywhere you want, is priceless. The problem is, as the previous poster said, there is just too much torque down low for this car for it to be able to put it down effectively. The chassis is too light, rear of the car is possibly too light (52/48) to deal with that kind of torque. We all know that this car does 500 or so tq in real life, not 406, and believe it or not, that's actually more torque per pound than the M5 (with dyno corrected).
I am not saying that torque is bad, it's quite handy in 3rd gear pulls for example. But what I'm saying is BMW should have made the DSC tuning just a bit aggressive so that it allows some sort of wheel spin unless the rear diff is getting locked. In other words, if you are accelerating in a straight line, DSC shouldn't be as aggressive as it is now. It is just to intrusive. Yeah sure I can man up and turn the traction control off, but there are times when you have your family with the car, you are accelerating in a 3 lane traffic with cars around you, it's not really the most sound thing to do.
...But what I'm saying is BMW should have made the DSC tuning just a bit aggressive so that it allows some sort of wheel spin unless the rear diff is getting locked. In other words, if you are accelerating in a straight line, DSC shouldn't be as aggressive as it is now.
MDM makes a difference on disproportional tire lock ratios, i.e while drifting/sliding. It makes no difference in straight line acceleration.
Anyways, I was actually going to say that I have had very good successful 9 total runs today with absolutely no DSC coming on and cutting me off. The difference was my tires were all over 110F. It was the same road, so I'm not sure if 15-20F of tire temperature can explain the drastic improvement.
That being said, again, this was not the case in my M5. I know the PSS tires in the M3 has a special compound and are different than the ones in M5. I'm sure all of this for a good reason. Maybe the tires are more track oriented and dont overheat? I'm not sure.
Second, I am not sure I understand what you said below. A differential will lock up or loosen based on wheel speed difference and in the case of M diff it also computes the lock up based on other parameters. I think you are assuming that traction at each tire is equal during straight line accel, which most often is not. Although I have no clue as to how the diff works in conjunction with DSC, do you have any technical info regarding that relationship?
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