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Jeff Smith's Blog

Traction Control
Posted September 1 2008 05:00 AM by CarCraft 
Filed under: Editorials

Traction control


In the street machine world, there are no rules. Since horsepower and torque are no so easy to make, acceleration is now based on traction. For the last five years or so, MSD has built a box called the Programmable Digital-7 Plus (PN 7531, $896.00 from Summit Racing). One feature among the many built-ins is slew rate. You determine the rate (in rpm/sec) at which the engine will accelerate for each gear. If the engine exceeds that rate (because the tires are spinning), the Digital-7 retards the timing to keep the engine at the original rate. This is a basic form of user-tunable traction control. Most sanctioning bodies have banned this option, but for a street car, this might be the hot ticket to compensate for varying racing surfaces. FAST also now offers its own version called Intelligent Traction Control that is part of the current XFI system or it can be retrofitted to an earlier XFI system. The FAST system uses driveshaft speed as the rpm source, which it claims is more accurate. The point here is that drag racing traction control is available, easily tunable, and can contribute to making your car quicker.

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