Octavia vRS on the skidpan

[aslsw]

On Sunday, I took the Skoda to the skidpan on Sutton Road with my son, who brought his Lancer along.

It was a mix of enjoyment and anti-climax. We (well, Rick Bates did the button pushing) discovered that only traction control can be disabled, while the stability control stays on all the time.

So, it was a lot of fun to get the car going sideways. The car has so much acceleration that I could really get the back end going even during the short corners. But stability control meant that once the tires found some grip it was back on the straight and narrow.

But it's nice to know that there is so much technology helping us out on the real roads.

All up, well worth the price of a birthday present!

[woofy]

I'll have to read the manual again, but from memory there are degrees of switching off with the first being traction control for snow etc. I'm pretty sure more can be switched off but I do recall vw owners saying the same thing and they can only now switch the lot off. There is. Reason for turning tc off but not really stability I guess.

[aslsw]

Rick said that on some cars in the VW family, a short press turns of TCS and a long press turns everything off. But we tried this (and other permutations) without success - but he admitted that in others in the family, you can only turn off TCS.

Reading up around the web tonight, the closest I've come to is a posting somewhere that says the 2010 Octavias introduced the new feature of permanently enabled stability control.

[woofy]

I'm pretty sure mine can be turned right off, I think they brought it in permanently with the Mk6 golf and probably the Skodas as well, but seems the ability to turn it off is coming back again.

[K1W1]

The TC is linked to the ABS so why can't you just pull the ABS fuse? In the old days they iused to do that all the time for braking exercises at advanced driving courses.
That's what people do on ABS bikes they want to ride in the dirt on.

[bobski]

I don't think its possible. I tried to have lots of fun on dirt roads when I took her away last.... Lot of rescuing understeer. Did get some nice sideways action, but it gets quickly spoiled....

Hopefully someone knows how to get it done, it seems like it'd be a great little slider...