Im not sure what it does exactly...?

 

ASC is All Season traction Control. It is an electronic system that is designed to reduce front wheel spin during acceleration. If one wheel starts to spin it will apply braking to that wheel, which causes the differential to transfer power to the other wheel. If both start spinning, it cuts engine power. On slippery surfaces it can make it feel like the engine is bogging down on acceleration.

You would want to turn it off when doing AutoX or track racing.

 

If you drive in a mostly sane manner, there is no reason to turn it off. If you like testing the limits of performance and like to minimize your 0-60 times on a regular basis, your should turn it off for those occassions, as it will cause the car to go into temporary "limp" mode if you start losing traction through a turn or on rapid acceleration. On a Cooper it's probably not an issue. On an MCS it is a big issue.

 

shoudl it be off or on when driving in winter or snow?

 

ASC will not apply braking individually to the wheels. That is only available with the ELSD feature (electronic limited slip differential) that is only available on the '09 JCW.

 

ON. It will prevent you from using too much throttle in slippery conditions.

 

kewl... and it will get me thru winter/snow if i used snow tires?

 

Where did you hear that?

From MINIUSA.com

 

you also want to turn it off when you're stuck in sand/snow so you can spin the drive wheel and rock the car out of the rut.

 

I thought only DSC works with the brakes, ASC focuses on reducing power when drive wheel slippage is detected.

 

I could be wrong but they way I read that is that the system comes into play "particulary in conditions with a different coefficient of friction" not the system creates a "different coefficient of friction".

A different coefficient of friction would be one tire spinning the other not. I could be wrong though.

 

I turn traction control off at the track since it can hinder rather than help. (i.e. with my M3...don't have my JCW yet). You don't want it to engage unexpectedly at the wrong time and upset the car's balance (like when you are at the edge of lateral traction crossing the apex of a turn). If I'm tracking in the rain then I leave it on.

The factory JCW allows you to turn it all off, but I guess it has yet to be determined if that really means completely off, or if it's more like on the M3 where turning it off means it's still there but much more forgiving.

 

I will sometimes turn off ASC if I have to quickly pull into traffic, nothing scary than having a little bit of wheel spin cutting all my engine power leaving me stranded in front of a 10 ton truck.

 

The different coeficients of friction they are talking about is between each of the wheels and the road surface. Nowhere do they mention application of brakes. They use throttle control to manage traction with ASTC. DSC will apply brakes to individual wheels to control cornering stability and ELSD will apply brakes individually to the front wheels to maximize traction during burn-outs (ASTC just shuts down the throttle to eliminate tire spinning during hard launches)

 

Yeah agree is mostly annoying, just comes in handy in the winter weather conditions. For other cases I rather have my right foot be the traction control and avoid the engine bogging seriously. I once ran autoX with it on accidently and my time was about 5 seconds slower out of 50

But then the button is a pain to turn off all the time and overall its still great to have if you live where it snows.

 

Hmm, if that's true, that really sucks. They have the ability to individually control brakes, and do it with DSC. If they only cut the engine, it will have to cut it to where it wont accelerate faster than the drive wheel with the least traction can handle. Can anyone think of a way to test this?

 

I haven't encountered snow or ice with my MINI yet, but with my Z3, if you have almost no traction and you're starting from stop, the ASC will keep cutting throttle until it kills the engine.

 

I believe that is how ASC works. However there is two versions of ASC. ASC and ASC+T, at least in the BMW world.

ASC+T has the ability to apply brakes to individual wheels. ASC does not. I have ASC in my M Coupe and it is only able to cut power. The newer M Coupes (01-02) has DSC (which ASC+T is part of) and the ability to apply brakes to individual wheel.

ASC hasn't been used in BMW cars for nearly a decade now so I believe the newer BMW/MINIs have ASC+T as the basic stability control.

 

BMW and Mini market these technologies differently, Mini does not market ASC+T. As others have said above, ASC on a Mini cuts engine power.

 

I don't know if ASC has the ability to brake individual brakes or not. My understanding before this thread was that ASC included most of the hardware of DSC (meaning, cutting engine and brakes) except the yaw sensors that help determine if a car is oversteering vs. understeering. Essentially, ASC just fixes wheelspin by keeping the front wheels from spinning (now I don't if that means brakes or engine power or both).

In my experience, I have no complaints against ASC as its level of intervention is far, far higher than the ridiculous DSC that I had on my Mazda. But at the very least I do know through my own experiences that oversteer is widely uncontrolled by the ASC on the MINI, something that I quite like considering how I normally turn the traction control off on most cars anyway.

 

Well considering a well balanced FWD car should be slightly biased to oversteer at throttle off, any traction control system should help prevent the understeer by not letting you put too much down with the front tires. Should be similar in all FWD cars with traction control. Generally the system gives you enough margin for everyday spirited driving, but it sure is annoying when it activates and bogs the engine.

 

The asc in my 98 m3/4/5 works great in the snow. The DSC in my 05 MCS worked horribly. I found in the MINI that if you have a handle on the car it's more reliable with the asc off.