Nib95

Seriously, this button on the bottom left should be the first button you press when you get in your car (to put it into Sport Handling Mode), irrespective of the driving mode you'll be driving in, and even if it's wet or cold (so long as it isn't snowy or icy).



Not only will you still retain an absurd amount of grip and traction (using Michelin Pilot Sport 4S's even in the wet I still can't get it to wheelspin, and can only get it to skid a tad during dangerously high speed cornering), but more importantly, your handling dynamics, steering responsiveness, corner exit speeds, overall level of control and steering precision will all notably increase. Add to that, you know that Sport+ jerkiness that can rear its ugly head on occasion? It will be considerably less likely to occur. For whatever reason the car is far less erratic at slow speeds in Sport+ with traction off (Sport Handling Mode active), than it is with traction on.

I wish there was a way the car could default with traction off, as it really is the best way to drive the car imo.

TModelle

You can. I have it set in Individual mode and then got the car modded to start in Individual mode. That’s how I do it.

Nib95

What type of mod? And is it warranty compliant?

AZFTW

Interesting - I've never considered turning it off. I will give it a shot...

Nib95

It can be a daunting prospect because the assumption is the car will be tail happy and skid a lot without traction on, but the reality is that even with traction off, because of the 4Matic system and stiffer suspension, you still have far more traction than you would in a RWD performance vehicle that has traction on.

There's essentially no negative to keeping traction off in the C43, since you don't actually lose much traction at all, and instead gain far better handling and throttle response, since the traction systems are no longer artificially slogging things down unnecessarily.

Bear in mind, I'm using Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S tires on 19" rims. I don't know if the stock tires would have less grip or not.

TModelle

ESP Sport is not ESP Off, just in case you’re wondering.

RichardCranium3

It's worth mentioning you cannot engage cruise control while in Sport Handling Mode or with TSC completely off. I'm all for fun, but to say the nanny's should be off 100% of the time is ludicrous, and why should be obvious...then again, this is the Internet.

Nib95

I've never used cruise control in my vehicle, but I am still able to use the speed limiter in Sport Handling Mode, which is useful for average speed cameras etc, and all I need.

Also, whilst I'd make distinctions for driving in the snow or ice, Sport Handling Mode offers more than enough traction even in heavy wet or freezing cold conditions. Infact, I have considerably more traction with the C43 in Sport Handling Mode than I did in my Jaguar XFS with all traction systems on.

AMGiggity

imagine someone reading the original post and think "wait a minute, this guy wants to drift his car while cruising, I must tell him how dumb he is"

Nib95

I think the irony of his own post was lost on him lol.

RichardCranium3

I just rolled 40,000 miles, almost exclusively in S+M, the majority of which through windy roads and miles of straights on my daily commute, and have never once a) thought I’m lacking on traction, b) I need to press more buttons than Mercedes already requires me to the moment I start the car, c) pushing another button is worth not being able to use cruise control when I’m trapped behind a blue hair going 54mph in a 55mph stretch of 2 lane.

Imagine talking **** about missing irony when you’ve both already missed me rounding my OP with acknowledging it. And I didn’t call anyone dumb...nanananabooboo ya ****

Nib95

Give Sport Handling Mode a try, you may find you much prefer it to Sport+ only in 90% of your driving. It just makes the entire car handle and feel that much more responsive and nimble, and even sharpens things up to be less jerky at slow speeds too.

You especially feel the difference or benefit however in corner exiting speed, where in Sport+ sometimes the traction control will somewhat reduce or bog down your acceleration or power output till the wheels are straight, whereas in Sport Handling Mode you have constant access to the entirety of power at your own command.

With respect to being stuck behind traffic, in those situations I just switch to my independent drive mode (a mix of Eco and Comfort), whilst staying in Sport Handling Mode, and if I remember correctly I still have access to both cruise control and my speed limiter in that mode. I only ever use speed limiter though, which definitely works in Sport Handling Mode. I'll test Cruise Control in Sport Handling Mode later.

alexasa

iTrader: (1)

I pretty much exclusively drive with traction completely off in the dry.

Saves the brakes too.

I honestly don't know how you enjoy this car with traction on if you're driving it hard. Car will bog so hard when it loses even slight traction. The car might lose a few degrees in the worst case scenario in dry conditions but nothing that doesn't self correct very quickly.

and it takes a millisecond to turn it back on for cruise control.

TModelle

If you are referring to ESP Sport when you say "Sport Handling Mode", then no, the cruise control does not work in this mode.

C4fitty

Sport suspension isn’t a bad mode to drive in cause it’s right in between the comfort and S+ my car is stuck in the sport suspension setting which I’ve gotten used to but I’m gonna get it looked at tomorrow to see what’s causing it to be like that.

jonathan358

Sorry to bring back a dead thread but as it is drift season:

I was attempting to slide through some corners last night with ESP off, Sport+, and manual mode. As I am depressing the gas, the brakes would kick in momentarily with an audible thump which has me thinking that the brakes may have always been on but the engine torque overcame the brake force which might explain the uneven brake pad wear on my last pad change (but I digress). I have successfully done donuts in the past and some drifts in my '18 C43 however they were not very clean. Looking in the Owner's Manual, it states that, "on vehicles with 4Matic: Traction Control/ETS remains active, even if you deactivate ESP". Even in the section for AMG vehicles, including the C63S, it states, "Traction Control is still activated".

A lot of the comments in this thread are confusing the different driver aid systems in our cars, so to make it clear:

ESP = Electronic Stability Program
ETS = Electronic Traction Support; (AKA Traction Control)
EBD = Electronic Brake Distribution
ABS = Anti-lock Braking System
Sport Handling = ESP Sport Handling Mode; allows for less interference while not being completely off

With that in mind, my question is: Is the only way to turn off Traction Control to put the car in Dynamometer Mode? Does this mode even turn off TC?

Bond55

I have the crappy all seasons atm while I wait for my new wheels and the car is quite easy to toss around and drift with ESC on, ESC Sport, ESC off whatever mode...It amuses me.

superswiss

It is a bit confusing the way it is written and the user manual doesn't really explain the details, but if you read the paragraph on ETS, you'll notice that ETS has two functions.


The first one is what most people commonly associate with traction control. It's the braking of spinning wheels and/or reducing of engine power to keep the wheels from spinning. That's the part that gets turned off if you turn off ESP. Notice that it says wheels may spin if you turn off ESP. The second function remains active and you don't really wanna turn that off. It still ensures that torque is sent to the wheel(s) with most traction. In the C43 that's done via the AWD system and it may even apply the brakes to simulate the effects of locking differentials. That's commonly referred to as electronic differential lock (EDL). The C63 (as of 2019) and C63S have electronic locking rear differentials, so ETS will continue to distribute the torque to the appropriate wheel by locking the differential at various degrees. The 2019+ C63S also has an adjustable traction control system. When ESP is turned off, the driver can choose one of nine levels using the drive mode select knob on the steering wheel to select the level of desired wheel spin. The driver can choose from no wheel spin to full wheel spin while still keeping ESP off.

jonathan358

How do you explain the braking of the front wheel (in direction of turn) when initiating a drift? I'll add a video later if I can.

superswiss

Simple, that's again EDL sending power to the outer front wheel that has traction. If you steer into a turn, the weight of the car shifts to the outside, so the inner tires have less grip than the outer tires and in addition the front tires use part of the grip to steer the car, so there is even less grip available for forward propulsion. This is why FWD and AWD vehicles tend to understeer. The finite grip of the front tires is shared between forward propulsion and steering and the sharper the turn, the more grip has to go towards steering and so if you also step on the throttle like crazy then there is not enough grip available to steer and move the car forward.

The C43 has open differentials in the back and front, and an open differential always sends the same amount of torque to both sides. This is not an easy concept to understand, because you have to remember that torque is a force and a force can only exist if there is an equal counterforce in the opposite direction. In a car, that counterforce is the friction on the tires, so there is only as much torque sent to a given wheel as there is friction. Once the wheel spins, the torque cannot increase. Now back to the open differential. Remember it always sends the same amount of torque to both sides, so that means if one wheel spins due to lack of friction the torque sent to that wheel is limited by the available friction and so the open differential sends that same limited torque amount to the other wheel. In the extreme case where the spinning wheel is on ice, very little torque gets sent to the wheel that still has traction and as a result the car isn't going anywhere. The differential can't reduce the torque on the spinning wheel and redirect it to the other wheel. In order to do that you need a way to lock the differential or imitate a differential lock by using the brakes to slow down the spinning wheel and redirect torque. That's what's happening in your example. There is not enough grip on the inner front wheel, so the brake slows it down to send the available torque to the outer wheel.

Another reason for this is torque vectoring, which is essentially taking EDL to the next level. When going into a turn, the front inner wheel and even the rear inner wheel are slowed down using the brakes to reduce the torque and send it to the outer wheels instead to induce an additional yaw moment to rotate the car. There's a lot going on in these cars this days.

jonathan358

Thanks, that was a good explanation of ETS. It sounds like one cannot drift a C43 without unevenly wearing out your brakes because traction control CANNOT be turned off due to the 4Matic system acting as an LSD.

What you says makes sense but where did you receive this source from; that turning off ESP only disables the "first function"? Will Dynamometer mode be able to turn off the "second function"?

superswiss

This is all knowledge I acquired over the years through education, research and personal interest. I have a couple of engineering degrees. None of this is unique to the C43. This stuff is found in many other cars and there is no secret to how differentials work. This information is readily available and can be learned. Dyno mode generally turns off all the electronic assistance, but again, you don't wanna turn this off, otherwise your car's power gets wasted by the wheels with the least traction instead of put to use and you won't really be drifting, because the car isn't sending enough torque to the wheels with more traction in order to break them loose. You may be able to drift on a slippery surface simply due to the low friction coefficient, but proper drifting involves overpowering the driven wheels so they break traction. That requires the car to send torque to the wheels that have most traction. You don't have to convince the wheels that already lack traction to spin. They'll do that anyway, but you'll have to get the ones with traction to break loose and spin and that requires a mechanism to direct the torque away from the spinning wheels to those that have traction.

Yes, open differentials are fine for regular daily driving, and the electronic differential lock is good enough for the occasional low traction situation, but it does waste power in the form of heat in the brakes and if you go too wild you can potentially cook your brakes. It's all a matter of cost and complexity. It's cheaper than actual locking differentials, but it's also lighter than a locking differential, so there are upsides to everything. Personally, I'll probably never own another performance car that doesn't' at least have an LSD in the rear. My current and last car both have active rear differentials and the difference is very noticeable if you are into having a good play time with the car. I'm planning on taking the AMG Driving Academy Drift program this year to improve my skills, and they don't use C43's for good reasons. We did some drifting on the complementary day that came with the purchase of the car and we were doing it in 2019 C63S's of course. The adjustable traction control lends itself very nicely to learning how to drift as one can gradually dial it down until it's all up to the driver to not spin the car around.

jonathan358

Right but with any electronic nannies, you should be able to turn off all functions of ETS one way or another. Even though the open differential won't let you send torque to the non-spinning wheels, the outside wheels will always have more traction thus still allowing you to steer while drifting. And RWD vehicles don't even have a powered front axle so this wasted energy is negligible, cooking the brakes should not be necessary. I am sure there are cars out there with AWD and open differentials that can drift without hitting the brakes on the inside wheels which is why I said this problem is relatively unique to the 4Matic system. Note that this situation is strictly for drifting purposes and I would never want these functions completely off during normal driving conditions.

Aside from that, how noticeable does having an LSD affect your driving? Having never driven a car with an LSD, I have always wondered when one of your wheel slips, the torque is sent to the other wheel, does this not cause a huge yaw moment about the car? In an open diff, the wheel that is slipping loses grip but that power isn't sent to the other wheel so the pull is still manageable. I.e. your right wheel falls into gravel shoulder while your left wheel remains in contact with the road surface.

superswiss

It's not the steering that's the issue. If you wanna drift you need to break the outer rear wheel loose, otherwise you won't drift. If not enough torque is going to the outer rear wheel, then you won't be drifting. There is no unmanageable pull with an LSD or e-diff. The main difference is that the car drives much more dynamic and fluid because there is no brake intervention and the torque is actively sent to the correct wheel. The e-diffs can also counteract load reversals and make the car more stable w/o ESP intervention and help rotate through the corners. I owned an '13 Audi RS5 before my C63S. It also had an active rear differential as well as brake based torque vectoring in addition. I felt the torque vectoring working on the front axle only once. I was flying through a canyon road and came up on a shaded area with the road all covered in wet leafs. I ended up drifting through the turn completely sideways. I slowed down into the corner and as I released the brakes and setup for the drift the inner front brake stayed applied tucking in the nose. It was very apparent that it was keeping my front end from wiping out and letting me properly drift through the corner. I had ESP in sport mode and not even completely turned off. I could get the tail end to step out in my RS5 regularly even with ESP fully on and even on dry road and as long as I manged the drift, ESP/TC would never intervene as it managed things with the active rear differential. That was kinda my epiphany moment about how these diffs can improve the fun and driving experience w/o being patronizing.

HighSun_Murder

This may be unrelated, but feels like it's in the same wheelhouse. I enabled the "Individual" mode and tweaked some settings, suspension exhaust etc. I noticed while driving using "I" mode, throttle response is TERRIBLE. I also noticed while on the highway at 60mph cruising speed, that If i take my foot off the gas, the dash displays no gear number until I mash the gas, wait through the latencey and it kicks back in. It really feels like the car is in neutral for a few seconds before reengaging the gear. What am I missing here? What is best practice for configuring "I" mode? Did i hit the "idiot button" somehow?
Figured I'd wait for my 10k service to bring it up with the dealer as all other modes seem to work just fine. Any info you guys can offer on "I" mode would be a big help
-Murder-