First snow day in Seattle I have to say, it handled surprisingly well in snow condition. If that's not enough, the DSC really helped control the car if it went the wrong way. It made me feel very confident with the car in snow, in the flat.

The only road up to my home is a very steep up hill. It's about 0.28 miles up. With the snow it's almost impossible to go up faster than 5mph. With a bit too much gas, it will start skidding then the car will go backwards down the hill. I was able to climb at a VERY VERY slow 2-3 mph up with DSC on the whole way up. I was holding at around 1200-1500 rpm and the DSC was doing it's magic.

When moving up, the MINI would turn to one side with no way of bringing it back straight. So I had to stop, move back a little to point it straight up again. At that point, I released the clutch slowly until DSC takes over and I can let it go. Then the car will move at around 2-3 mph at 1200rpm.

I know that It would be very hard for me to get up the hill without the help of DSC and I know I would've burned the clutch trying to get up there.

I have to thank the DSC for bringing me home. Without it, I would be walking up the steep hill. If the steepest hills are 45 degrees, I would say the hill is close to 30-35 degrees. I don't have a measurement of it exact though but it's pretty steep.

Now my question is, how does the DSC/ASC work to control the start up skid? How does it "cut engine power" on the wheel? Does it work like a clutch? Does that mean I burned it A LOT? I didn't time it but it would have been around 10-20 mins straight up.

 

Snow? what's that?, i'm just glad that you and your MINI got home in one piece

 

ASC is electronic, it cuts power by cutting fuel, spark, or both - no worries about 'using something up' if it engages a lot.

 

But I was just curious, if it connects straight to the engine, 2-3 mph would result in... 300 rpm? That's a stall. How does it disconnect from the engine at that speed?

The weird thing is, I was going at 2-3 mph with 1200-1500 rpm.

 

Maybe as a result of slippage? If it's dry I can barely do 7mph

Have you seen the Mini.ca stuff going around? There's a link right on the front of the Mini Canada page that covers the different ABS/DSC/Traction Control/EBD differences, and it's funny to boot.

 

For the record, the steepest streets in San Francisco are a 31.5% grade. A 45% grade is probably undrivable by anything other than a helicopter.

 

A helicopter or perhaps my rockcrawler </hijack>

Seriously though, I would guess an LSD will cause big problems for a MINI when trying to climb a snow covered hill of that nature. Once the LSD locks in, both front tires are spinning causing the vehicle to rotate, just as the OP stated. No mention of LSD though ...

Cheers,
Jeff

 

Just curious, have you ever tried backing up the hill (in snow)?

 

or an Audi

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/63012/audi_goes_up/

 

Imagine what your car could do with proper winter tires. It is nice to know that the nanny actually helped you.

 

The funniest thing about that video is there is a cable pulling the Audi up the ski jump. You can see it at the 63 second point in the video.

 

I see you are back to padding your post numbers again...........

 

You too eh??

Is it the word nanny that makes you magically appear?

 

I do have LSD. I'm not entirely sure which of the technologies were used when I climbed that slippery hill. I would guess ASC helped cutting the power and LSD helped transfering power to the wheel with the tiny bit of grip.

I'm just curious to how exactly do they cut power to individual wheels. If the clutch is engaged and the engine connects directly to the driveshaft, there must be something mechanically slipping the power to make the rpm from the engine and the speed of the vehicle mismatch.

 

I believe that the brake is applied to a spinning wheel to divert power to the wheel that has more traction.

 

Hey I got to catch up somehow don't I? .........................

 

+1

 

Yes I guess you do, if that's important to ya.

Speed secret.... Turn of the DSC you'll post faster.

 

This is the true nature of the traction control. dsc is a more complicated version of traction control which has the ability to apply brake on individual wheels ie. right front wheel only, or just left front and left rear wheels etc.

traction control cuts power down by ignoring gas pedal commands and applies brakes to the spinning wheel to stop it from spinning and gives the power to the other wheel which has more traction.

in a world with no traction control and limited slip differential, it would be very very very hard to climb that hill in my opinion because when one of the front wheels start spinning, the diff would lock and the other one would rotate the car. but asc and dsc blocks this.
anyway, i think the fastest (not the safest) way to climb is with no lsd and no dsc and of course snow tires.

 

Or crash into a post faster.

 

Best advice I can give you is to move to the bottom of the hill! But, I'll bet it's really pretty up there...

I remember a steep hill that led to my home in the SW St. Louis area. One by one the cars were trying to go up on one snowy and icy day; one by one they slid back. Even a school bus tried. Finally my turn came. I was driving a '69 BMW 2002 automatic (yes, this was back in the day), and I couldn't believe it but I was actually able to nurse it all the way! Normally this car couldn't fight its way out of a paper bag in the snow... I still haven't figured out how I got it over that hill!

I live in a flat area now. Hate it.

 

A footnote to the audi ad... the cable was there for safety so the car would not slip back down the ramp, it was not pulling the car up the ski jump. The car drove up the jump under its own power, a fairly remarkable feat. This ad is actually a recreation of an original record-setting moment done with a much older audi sedan (circa 1986).

Here are more details of the A6 doing its backwards Eddy the Eagle:
http://fourtitude.rely.net/cgi-bin/a...iew.cgi/6/1102

And here is a link to the original commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHH-726_8lA

Marketing trickery is certainly rampant but it is not the case here.

 

I once helped a friend drive a 1967 Firebird 400 (400 cu in engine) across Canada in the fall. It was a California car wide summer tires his brother had taken to Harvard and couldn't sell there (he also had a Ferrari GTB4). We were at a small inn somewhere north of the Great Lakes when we had an overnight snow that buried the car. We tried to head west to the next town and encountered a hill. No amount of sand would get two California boys in a California hot rod up that hill. You couldn't keep the car's rear wheels on the ground in a light rain. Ice and snow...

 

Have the traction control systems changed markedly between the R53 and R56? Because the DSC in my '06 is worthless in the snow..

I don't know how much snow you get in that part of Oregon and your experience driving in it, but try turning DSC off next time to see what happens.


I've gone nearly full-lock to go straight up snowy hills before. DSC turned off, LSD on (drr). Snows fun, we're getting a couple feet tonight.

 

Well they have you fooled.