Traction Control & Launch Control
ALBI Engineering is dealer van Racelogic Traction Control en Launch Control systemen. Het is een universeel systeem wat op diverse manieren aangesloten kan worden op alle auto’s, zowel voorwiel- als achterwielaangedreven
auto’s.
Het systeem werkt o.a. door 4 aparte snelheidsensoren of abs-sensoren aan te sluiten. Als hierdoor wielspin gedetecteerd wordt, wordt het motorvermogen gereduceerd door de injectoren individueel aan te sturen
of ontsteking aan te passen, tot de grip is hersteld. O.a. Lotus en Aston Martin maken standaard gebruik van dit systeem. Het systeem kan met de computer of in de auto (digitaal of analoog) op verschillende sliphoeken ingesteld
worden. Launch Control kan apart ingeschakeld worden.
Meer info op www.racelogic.co.uk
How many times have you...
Tried to pull out of a junction but excessive wheelspin has slowed you down?
Gently accelerated on a slippery surface, without knowing if the car will suddenly skid?
Tried to overtake a slower car without knowing how hard you can safely accelerate?
Worried about anybody else driving your high powered car?
...The answer is to fit Racelogic Traction Control
Universally
recognised as the best after market system available, not only dramatically reducing the chances of an accident, but also positively enhancing acceleration. This is why companies like Aston Martin and Lotus Cars choose to fit
the system, as unlike other systems, it always improves the performance of the vehicle. The car becomes more fun to drive than before, giving the driver new levels of confidence in pushing the car to its limits without ever
over stepping the mark.
Driving with Traction Control
Once you have driven a powerful car with Racelogic Traction Control, you will never want to be without it. We are so sure that we offer a 30 day money back
guarantee if you don't agree. Acceleration out of junctions becomes rapid and repeatable, just bury the throttle and the system does the rest, constantly adjusting the power of the engine every thousandth of a second, searching
for maximum grip. In a rear wheel drive car you can use full throttle around a corner with full confidence that the rear end isn't going to suddenly break away. In a front wheel drive vehicle push-on understeer is cured, with
the system setting the correct level of power to finely balance the vehicle.
In wet and slippery conditions the system really becomes fun, stamp on the gas and watch other cars disappear behind you as the car accelerates
as fast as the grip allows without skidding all over the road. Acceleration away from traffic lights is so much quicker than cars without the system, that you'll leave behind scores of drivers with faster cars.
Traction Control on 20% slip 
Traction Control on 10% slip 
Traction Control on 0% slip 
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Front Wheel Drive Cars
If your powerful front wheel drive car is prone to wheelspin or power understeer, then the Traction Control system will give a good benefit. Coming out of tight hairpins the throttle
can be buried, and the system modulates the power extremely quickly to provide maximum acceleration without wasteful wheelspin. As you turn into a corner, the throttle
again can be buried, and instead of drifting wide of the apex as the front wheels scrabble for grip, the car will power through the corner at the maximum speed without
understeering. This will reduce tyre wear quite considerably, and improve performance. In the wet the system comes into it's own, you will go at least 1 or 2 seconds per
kilometre quicker, and in tight slippery conditions it will be much more. We have fitted the system to a number of tarmac cars, and in the wet they even outpace some 4wd cars!
Traction Control Technical
How it Works
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The system works by monitoring the speed of all four wheels
using the ABS system or specially fitted sensors. When wheelspin is detected the engine power is reduced, by cutting a single injector pulse or a spark, until grip is resumed. This occurs in a thousandth of a second, and
appears to the driver as a slight miss-fire with no loss in acceleration.
Maximum acceleration is achieved by limiting the slip between the tyre and the road. The point at which a tyre is just beginning to slip against
the road gives the maximum coefficient of friction value.
Graph showing friction vs percent wheel slip
From the graph above it can be seen the maximum coefficient of friction (µ) occurs at a slip between tyre and road of 10% when dry, and around 5% when wet.
Maintaining this level of slip is inherently difficult, as the grip levels drop off significantly above these levels, meaning the balance between too much wheelspin and not enough power is very fine.
To drive the car and search for these levels of slip is very difficult, the moment the wheels start spinning too much (and how do you feel what is too much?) the power has to be reduced (by what amount?).
Top rally drivers have a good feeling for this limit, but they still tend to stay on the side of caution, and modulate the wheelspin between 10-20%, as this will still achieve 90% of
the available traction. The closer to 5 or 10% slip, the higher the chance of reducing the power too much, and hindering acceleration, but also the closer you are to using 100% of the available traction.
The main reason for this is the response time of a human being. The fastest human reaction to a sense stimulus is 1/10th of a second, and the fastest acting throttle reacts
in around the same time. This means there is a 2/10ths of a second lag between the wheel reaching a critical slip level, and the driver being able to change the amount of
power being applied. This is why really good drivers tend to drive between 10 and 20% slip, to give a margin of safety should the tyres suddenly find a little more grip, causing the wheel to stop spinning completely.
Less experienced drivers will tend to allow 20-30% or more slip, again to maintain wheelspin rather then let the car 'bog' down, thus limiting their grip levels to around 85% of their maximum.
With the advent of fast reacting electronics on cars, this problem has been tackled with Traction Control systems. In race cars, Traction Control Systems have two functions,
number one is to maintain the precise level of slip that will give close to 100% of the available grip, and number two is to maintain stable cornering. These two functions are linked, but require slightly different approaches.
The speed of reaction of a race Traction Control System is critical in maintaining a precise level of slip. The electronics themselves can react within a thousandth of a
second, but to remain effective the engine power has to be quickly, and precisely controlled.
In road cars Traction Control normally relies on two methods of reducing the speed of
the spinning wheel, brake application and throttle intervention. Brake application is a very effective and quick way of reducing the speed of a spinning wheel (almost unusable
in a race situation - more later) but the accompanying throttle intervention is mechanically slow, and will also only reduce the airflow, which takes some time to
become effective. On a road car the Traction Control System plays a third role, one of safety, in this role the level of slip is reduced to zero, and held there. This results in a very
stable car, but one which will not accelerate at it's maximum potential at all times.
Race Traction Control Systems rely on much more precise, and faster acting ways of
reducing power. The first method is shutting off fuel to the engine, and the other is cutting out the spark. Both methods have exactly the same high speed modulation ability, but
the spark cutting system will happen potentially one cycle earlier. The magnitude of difference in reaction times between spark cut and fuel cut is negligible compared with
the difference between throttle actuation and spark/fuel cut. (See fuel cut and spark cut below)
The Traction Control System then comes down to the interaction between the
information from the wheel speed sensors and the level of power reduction applied. A good system would be capable of maintaining a level of slip that is adjustable depending on conditions.
Many factors affect the ideal level of slip, wet / dry conditions, speed of the vehicle, lateral g-force (cornering), tyre compound, tyre pressures etc. Ideally the driver should be
able to dial in a base level of slip that takes into account weather and tyres, and the system should adjust automatically for speed of the vehicle and lateral g-force.
When cornering, the system should reduce the amount of slip available, to prevent lateral slip from occurring, and vary this amount depending on the speed of the vehicle. At high
speed, low grip situations, this slip should be around 1-2% to maintain forward momentum, and at low speed high grip situations, this can be much higher.
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Fuel Cut
The idea of cutting fuel to an engine sets alarm bells ringing in engine builders, as they
all know of the potential disaster of a high revving race engine running lean. Running in a lean combustion mode will elevate in-cylinder temperatures very rapidly, the denser the
air/fuel charge, the more heat the lean burn can generate. Therefore it is vital that a fuel cut system will not cause a lean burn.
The simplest way of preventing a lean burn is to remove more than 50% of the fuel from
the pulsed delivery. A mixture will only ignite if the air/fuel ratio is within a tightly defined window, look at the efforts being put into making lean burn engines fire on very low
air/fuel ratios (1:20 or more). Removing more than 50% of the fuel will cause an air fuel ratio of over 1:25 and will result in a complete miss-fire, with the unburned fuel passing
out through the exhaust valve. Even if a high air/fuel ratio did manage to ignite, the energy available from the amount of petrol injected wouldn't be enough to elevate
temperatures significantly. Of course the ideal system will remove 100% of the pulsed fuel delivery, allowing the cylinder to take a gulp of fresh air, and the in-cylinder
temperature would remain virtually unaffected. Racelogic Traction Control operates in this manner - the complete injector pulse is removed so no possibility of lean burn can exist.
Prolonged fuel cut on one particular cylinder would cause scavenging of the petrol lining the inlet tracts, and when the next full fuel pulse arrived, it would be partially reduced in
quantity by the re-wetting of these tracts. Therefore it is often important to manage a rotation of the cylinder cutting to prevent this situation from occurring.
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Spark Cut
Cutting the spark to an engine will stop any chances of a weak mixture occurring, but it
carries it's own potential problems due to a large quantity of unburned fuel travelling through the cylinder and out of the exhaust. This petrol can remove some of the oil lining
the inside of the cylinder, and pass it thorough the exhaust, again this only becomes a problem if the fuel to one particular cylinder is cut for an extended time. The best way to
overcome this is to rotate the order in which the cylinders are cut.
The unburned fuel in the exhaust will have a catastrophic affect if there is a catalytic
converter in the exhaust, as it will try to convert the unburned fuel to harmless elements, effectively burning the mixture. This causes the catalytic converter to heat up very rapidly,
reaching temperatures in excess of 1000°C, and possibly melting down completely. Thus prolonged spark cut is not recommended for catalytic equipped cars.
Traction Control Technical
Launch Control
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Launch control is a function within the Traction Control
system designed to automate standing starts to maximise the initial acceleration.
It is activated by pressing a button on the dashboard when the car is stationary. This will bring in a secondary rev-limit (for example
4000 rpm).
The throttle can be fully depressed without over-revving the engine. The car is put into gear, the throttle floored, and then the clutch is engaged, whilst the launch control system controls the
wheelspin and revs for the perfect start.
On a turbo car, if the launch control is active, and full throttle is given for two to three seconds, the boost pressure will build up before the clutch is released, resulting in
stunning off-the-line performance.
The launch control rev limit can be programmed via a laptop computer or by a combination of presses on the launch control button. This is done by pressing it once, and then once
again but this time holding it in and raising the revs to the desired level, then the button is released, setting the new rev limit to this level. This makes it very easy to re-program the launching revs just before a start if
conditions suddenly change.
There are various parameters you can tune if you want to get the last little bit of acceleration out of the system. You can have two switchable levels for wet and dry, the
level of wheelspin at which the system swaps from Launch Control to traction Control can be adjusted, and on the professional system you can even switch to a lower limit once the car starts to move.
Traction Control Products and Pricing (excl btw)
Kits vanaf € 600.- ex btw. Mail voor een prijsopgave voor uw auto.
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Part Number Traction System
RLTC6A Adjustable Traction Control (Max 12 Cyl) ABS
RLTC6AW Adjustable Traction Control (Max 12 Cyl) (TCWSSSET required)
RLTC6AL
Adjustable Traction Control (6 Cyl) + Launch Control ABS
RLTC6ALW Adjustable Traction Control (6 Cyl) + Launch Control (TCWSSSET required)
RLTC6DIA
Adjustable Traction Control (6 Cyl) + Launch Control ABS + Digital Adjuster
RLTC6DIAW Adjustable Traction Control (6 Cyl) + Launch Control + Digital Adjuster (TCWSSSET required)
RLTC8ALD Adjustable Traction Control (8 Cyl) + Launch Control + Data Logging ABS
RLTC8ALDW Adjustable Traction Control (8 Cyl) + Launch Control + Data Logging + (TCWSSSET
required)
RLTC8DIA Adjustable Traction Control (8 Cyl) + Launch Control + Data Logging ABS + Digital Adjuster
RLTC8DIAW
Adjustable Traction Control (8 Cyl) + Launch Control + Data Logging + Digital Adjuster (TCWSSSET required)
Add-on Options Price
TCDIA Digital Adjuster
TCWSSSET Set of 4 Wheel Speed Sensors
TCCLUSHIFT Full Throttle Shift