[calumski]

There's plenty been written about having VDC OFF invalidating the warranty, but the parting shot from my dealer about "never switch VDC OFF " has spooked me into not even venturing into R-Mode.

This is the first car I've ever driven with traction control so it's nuts that I feel so hesitent. My last car was an Evo IX-GT with mecahnical LSD at the rear, so "giving it some" over bumps and through bends with sketchy surfaces was never an issue.

Just what kind of behavior should I expect in R-Mode. I'm sick to death of the nanny VDC killing any of the dynamics just as the fun begins ... is it really going to snap into uncatchable oversteer and end up with me in a ditch? :nervous:

 

[turbobungle]

R mode is still pants and i hate it, it lets you have a few degrees of slip before cutting power and ruining fun! I won't even drive it in normal mode, thats just ridiculous! Don't be scared of R mode. As for 'off' I've been too worried about warranty issues so wouldn't know, the whole situation is STUPID! :chairshot

 

[calumski]

You've said enough to allay any misgivings I had so I'll switch to R-Mode for a while and see what happens.

I've still got the IX-GT and it can dance rings around the GT-R on anything but smooth, fast A-roads. Feeling a touch mugged by Nissans marketing blurb.

 

[David.Yu]

R mode is fine for most driving.

VDC off is best left for wide open tracks.

I thought it only invalidated the warranty if it proved to be the cause of a failure?

I don't care, it's my car and I drive it how I want!

 

[calumski]

I thought it only invalidated the warranty if it proved to be the cause of a failure.

To give the dealer his dues, this is exactly the scenario he warned about.

 

[zeyd]

R mode is smooth enough to have fun. Normal mode is indeed silly when the car is driven fast.

 

[calumski]

Boost! R-Mode far better than Normal, for me certainly.

Still plenty of flashing orange warning lights from the dash but progress is far less interfered with. :squintdan

 

[EvolutionVI]

Just what kind of behavior should I expect in R-Mode. I'm sick to death of the nanny VDC killing any of the dynamics just as the fun begins ... is it really going to snap into uncatchable oversteer and end up with me in a ditch? :nervous:

R mode ist still killing all fun...you go around a small hairpin,nail it,it steps out middle of the corner and dgoes sideways very controllable,you got a big smile on your face.....then VDC comes in and brings the car back to normal...uke:

VDC is maybe nice to have for unexpierienced drivers.....anybody who can drive has the VDC in his right feet,its not possible to spin a GTR with VDC off...its still AWD and so easy to drive,if you spin the GTR just because the VDC was on "off",you should honestly not drive any car (Sorry David)

 

[David.Yu]

R mode ist still killing all fun...you go around a small hairpin,nail it,it steps out middle of the corner and dgoes sideways very controllable,you got a big smile on your face.....then VDC comes in and brings the car back to normal...uke:

VDC is maybe nice to have for unexpierienced drivers.....anybody who can drive has the VDC in his right feet,its not possible to spin a GTR with VDC off...its still AWD and so easy to drive,if you spin the GTR just because the VDC was on "off",you should honestly not drive any car (Sorry David)

:chuckle:

To be fair, I used to think exactly like you, why the frak should a 4WD vehicle need the further assistance of ESP?

But as you well know, the R35 is very often NOT a 4WD vehicle, and in the wet, on anywhere other than an open airfield, you are risking a spin if you drive it hard with VDC off, at least on the Dunlop summer tyres.

Having said that, in the dry, VDC off is the way to go if you want to be fully in control of the car, but I seldom find R overly intrusive. The GT-R was never designed to be a full-on drift car!

 

[EvolutionVI]

:chuckle:

To be fair, I used to think exactly like you, why the frak should a 4WD vehicle need the further assistance of ESP?

But as you well know, the R35 is very often NOT a 4WD vehicle, and in the wet, on anywhere other than an open airfield, you are risking a spin if you drive it hard with VDC off, at least on the Dunlop summer tyres.

Having said that, in the dry, VDC off is the way to go if you want to be fully in control of the car, but I seldom find R overly intrusive. The GT-R was never designed to be a full-on drift car!

Putting your name in was just a joke......if you come on standing water like you did,nothing can stop the spin...not the driver or the vdc....sometimes you have bad luck,you had a lot good luck that nothing was your way.....:thumbsup:

 

[David.Yu]

I know you were joking! :thumbsup:

But that wasn't really bad luck, I've done hundreds of laps around Bedford and know that corner well. There was no real standing water there, just greasy dampness and it is a slippy corner.

But the real point, as I highlighted in my captions in the vid is it is completely different with VDC OFF rather than R mode! You can begin to kid yourself in R mode that you are a supernatural driving god, because it does allow a half turn of opposite lock before intervening in an obvious way.

However, in reality, it is really working pretty hard all the time, especially in crazy conditions like in my video (there were only another 2 or 3 cars on track it was that bad).

So as soon as you turn it off, you will most likely come off! (In the wet.)

Of course, I chose Bedford to switch it off because it has very little to hit, again not entirely down to luck! (although that brake board was pretty close... )

If anyone hasn't seen the video we are referring to, check out The Gallery on this site.

 

[Rich-GT]

This has probably been posted before, but I have not seen it.

VDC off acording to Clarkson. YouTube - Clarkson's Thriller Nissan GTR

I have to say my limited experience of VDC off in the dry, but with not much room to play, was that the car became quite larey, to the extent that I felt I had become quite dependant on VDC would need to learn how to drive it again


Rich

 

[thistle]

I have noticed that VDC is quick to cut power in a straight line in the wet, but doesn't really try that hard to sort out yaw related to coarse steering or throttle when you have steering lock on (these would be sorted by braking individual wheels as well as killing power). I never sorted out in my mind whether R mode just raises the intervention slip angle/speed thresholds or whether it disables braking of individual wheels. I gather there are three methods for control - wheel braking, engine power reduction due to closing of the throttle and changing centre differential lockup or torque distribution, but the info and diagrams seem contradictory.

It also intervenes a lot and often doesn't bother flashing the yellow triangle.

It is odd the psychological effect, I have no worries about driving a car without traction control, but it seems reckless to run with it off on a car that has it, even my wife's Golf V GTI with only 200 PS felt rather different when the ESP failed.

I still think the Evo was perhaps more rewarding to drive fast, but it had considerably less torque and I have to keep reminding myself of that especially when I compare them in the wet when the Evo had PS2 and the GTR has Dunlops.

 

[turbobungle]

But the real point, as I highlighted in my captions in the vid is it is completely different with VDC OFF rather than R mode! You can begin to kid yourself in R mode that you are a supernatural driving god, because it does allow a half turn of opposite lock before intervening in an obvious way.

.

David, if you can get half a turn of opposite lock before VDC intervenes, does that mean you can hold onto a slide which requires less than half a turn and ride it out on the power?? Mine won't let me have half a turn before stepping in, maybe a quarter at most and it won't let me hold any sort of slide at all. :chairshot

And Thistle, you need to shoot that cat!

 

[EvolutionVI]

David, if you can get half a turn of opposite lock before VDC intervenes, does that mean you can hold onto a slide which requires less than half a turn and ride it out on the power?? Mine won't let me have half a turn before stepping in, maybe a quarter at most and it won't let me hold any sort of slide at all. :chairshot

And Thistle, you need to shoot that cat!

Mine was the same....in the moment the backend stepped out the VDC came in.....terrible,especialy in wet conditions:nervous:

+1 for shooting the cat:thumbsup:

 

[thistle]

But I love my pussy cat very much Child substitute, and she rocks.

 

[David.Yu]

David, if you can get half a turn of opposite lock before VDC intervenes, does that mean you can hold onto a slide which requires less than half a turn and ride it out on the power?? Mine won't let me have half a turn before stepping in, maybe a quarter at most and it won't let me hold any sort of slide at all. :chairshot

And Thistle, you need to shoot that cat!

Hmm, good question. Hard to say as I seldom deliberately tried to prolong the slide, but provided the lock was being wound off and the throttle kept on, the intervention was slight and not as annoying as I feared it would be in R.

I suppose it wouldn't be surprising if R mode would not allow prolonged drifting with half a turn of oppo on!

 

[Kamae]

At the risk of being quite controversial I am hatching the niggling suspicion that not all GTRs are the same. When driving round Silverstone I found the VDC to be intrusive - maybe it kept me on the track, but it certainly prevented me from getting full power on when trying to accelerate early out of a bend. I was a little disappointed about this but reminded myself that I was probably driving much harder on the track than I was likely to on the roads.

Then I took delivery of the GTR

In the 3 or so months I've had it I've dome around 3500 miles and tried it in all possible road conditions. The reality is that it's so well rooted to the road that you really have to push very hard indeed to get any oversteer, but when you do I've found the VDC to be subtle and organic, bringing the car back into line in without loss of power or pace, even in the normal mode.

In a flat out twisty country lane thrash in RRR I felt the rear skipping over bumps and felt traction shifting from front to rear and even corner to corner pulling the car into bends or pushing the back end out allowing me to feed in more power and blast towards the next apex.

I've never felt the VDC to be intrusive, and I've had the back end out many times, though not into a full blown drift (where would you ever wish to do that on the road anyway!!!). I've had to come to the conclusion that my own car is much better set up than the one I drove around Silverstone and it sounds like it's better than some of the cars on here. I love it and can't imagine why I'd ever need to switch it off. I also find the difference between normal and race to be very subtle and I cannot agree with Clarkson (not that I ever do agree with him much anyway) about the uninvolving performance of the car.

If you play his original top gear review of the car (the one where he hurt his neck) side by side with the link above then you may draw the same conclusion as I - not all GTRs are the same. He described the DMG that he drove around the Fuji raceway as 'animal', 'organic' and 'fantastic'. I agree. My car is like that!

 

[David.Yu]

I think there could be a couple of factors at work there.
1) the GT-Rs at last year's Academy were all US or JDM models, obviously.
They had stiffer suspension and maybe tighter VDC?
2) they were run on Pirelli P Zero non-runflats. Turn-in and response were notably less good than our Dunlop summer GT-R tyres. Maybe they also had less grip OR their response lead the VDC to believe they had much less grip, hence triggering it early?

Actually the latter could very well be the case, as my friend's 350Z had to put on a set of Falken tyres on the back at short notice and the softer sidewalls send the car's systems berserk!

ABS would cut in abnormally and even with ESP off, it would behave very unpredictably into corners.

 

[Kamae]

mmm, interesting points David - and I'm sure there's some truth in all of that - but it wouldn't explain the difference that we're apparently experiencing in our own cars. I can't imagine how fast I'd have to drive my car to experience the symptoms others on here complain about (and no, before everyone suggests otherwise, I don't drive slowly!)