ESP, What's that all about

[neildavies]

Me and fellow 406'er Dairees went for a jaunt in my car on the weekend and we suddenly forgot how old we are and thought we were back in the mid nineties.

So for one mad 10 minutes, I forgot that I look after my cars!!

By this I mean we were going round roundabouts on a saturday afternoon trying to get the car sideways (well, oversteer at least). The car did this surprisingly well, then Dai said how he spotted the ESP light coming on. So I thought how much fun we could have without the ESP on.

But surprsingly, I just couldn't get the car to kick out hardly at all.

The the moral of the story is, for fun and entertaining driving, buy a car with ESP (that's also supposed to make the car more controlable and safer, hmmm)

[mjb]

I nearly wrote off a Golf due to ESP... Got it oversteering nicely around a corner (countryside at night, nothing coming), then all of a sudden it stops sliding and lurches straight forwards into the ditch... Put the sh*ts right up me and took some serious fighting to get it going the right way again. Moral of the story is if you're intentionally not far past the limits of traction, ESP can ruin your day

Another problem with it is I did get far too comfortable letting ESP take care of understeer on long fast bends. Seemed perfectly fine at the time but looking back it was pretty stupid doing that; I'd definitely kill the ESP before doing similar again. At least without ESP you can feel when to back off the throttle a little...

Thankfully I've got none of that crap in my tubby

[Welly]

'Throwing' a HDi around roundabouts is a no no!

The sump is of a poorly designed non-baffled arrangement and right-hand manouvers like this starve the oil pick up.

You will shortly find the engine has been damaged by oil starvation and will need to be replaced.

and if you believe this you will believe anything

[STALLED]

There is good and bad!

Got in trouble when test driving the Fiesta XR4 (ST over in UK)when I cooked it a tad too hard through a corner and got the front to plow a bit - ESP saved the day!

[GeordieBoy]

'Throwing' a HDi around roundabouts is a no no!

The sump is of a poorly designed non-baffled arrangement and right-hand manouvers like this starve the oil pick up.

You will shortly find the engine has been damaged by oil starvation and will need to be replaced.

and if you believe this you will believe anything

What you on about? Mine gets thrown about all over the place, its surprising how much grip the 406 has, it really takes some doing to get the back end out, but it is possible.

[neildavies]

(Have a read of Welly's small print (and it is bloody small!!))

Got to say though Welly, you're a b***ard, had me for a minute.

As for the ESP, I agree it has it's good points. It helped me out in an accident (if that makes sense!). When a car hit me from behind, I managed to steer round the car in front of me while I was firmly on the anchors.

[bargainbro]

Yep, there are some points that make sense with ESP. At first of course I was against it. Thought that it would take all the "fun" out of the driving. Few years back
I took a 2004 year model 406 V6 for a test drive.The car had ESP. It was early March, I recall, and all the roads were of course covered with snow and had icy rails on them. I was positively surprised how smoothly the ESP worked in such conditions. I mean my worst fear was that it would be too much "in control", but it wasn´t like that at all. The ESP only took part when it was necessary, at the very limits of traction. And those were the occasions when I would had been forced to do some serious steering manouvers or change the gear etc. if the car had not had the ESP. That test drive got me convinced that the ESP certainly has its points especially in the winter, when it can be a lifesaver.