Curious...what does it do?

[JenBug]

What does the ASR button do? I can't find my manual.

[dvious]

traction control on/off

[noR]

It keeps you on the road. It saves your tires. And your life.


The button turns OFF your traction control. (yay for burnouts, launches, and performance driving in controlled situations) When the indicator is ON, your control is OFF. It's yellow cause it's a warning. If the indicator is flashing it means you're sliding all crazy like and not driving in the forward direction. [it blinks when it's actively doing something, like cutting throttle, applying brake to the rear left wheel, and then applying brake to the right front wheel, then removing all brakes, and returning you to your regularly scheduled driving)

[CaptainXeroid]

If you take your Bug to the Dyno, you'll definitely want to press that button and turn it off or the system will not allow you to rev the engine with the parking brake engaged. Yeah...we learned that one from experience.

[neko]

Originally Posted by noR

It keeps you on the road. It saves your tires. And your life.

...When the indicator is ON, your control is OFF. ...

And dear ORG members, YES I AM AN IDIOT !!!! I kept "turning it on" when it rains !!!!
Lucky it did not rain that much and I drive slowly....

... now I am going in a corner hiding in shame ....

[Holland]

I call it the burn out button

[JenBug]

So basically, if I want to stay on the road in icy/rainy/wet situations, I should not press that button...thanks everyone.

[Moviequill]

when we were in the car with the salesman giving us the final "walk-around" speech, he told us to push it on and never touch it again

[noR]

He lied to you. Probably just didn't understand the system.

It's a "PASSIVE SAFETY device... meaning ... it's on. You have to actively do something to turn it off.

[FineExampl]

Or in other words....don't touch the button because you do not need to no matter what you're doing unless you are trying to do something specific like a burnout, dyno, etc. Basically that button is used by the car nuts. I do not have one. Kinda wish i did though.

[pencilneck]

Originally Posted by JenBug

So basically, if I want to stay on the road in icy/rainy/wet situations, I should not press that button...thanks everyone.

ASR is part of the ABS brakes. The best example I can give of what it does is lets stay you are at a traffic light waiting for the green light during an snow storm. When the light turns green and you stomp on the throttle pedal the front tires are going to spin. ASR will apply the brakes and have the ECM reduce power output of the engine so that the front wheels can gain traction. Another function of this is "EDL" which is where if one wheel starts to spin, the brake for that wheel will be applied just for that wheel so it can gain traction again. ASR only watches and controls the front brakes.

If you see the light in the instrument cluster blink on a rainy day, that is the ASR kicking in.

When you depress the button on the dash and the light comes on, you have not turned it off. What you have done is raise the level of how much wheel spin is now going to be allowed. If you got stuck in a snow rut, ASR will keep killing the power to the wheels, you'll have to rock back and forth to get out, thus hit the button to raise the level of how much wheel spin is allowed so you can get going.

However, if your are driving down the road and a puppy dog jumps out in front of your car and you swerve, ASR won't help you at all... if you loose control, then you loose control.

There is another system called "ESP" which if the puppy dog jumped out in front of you and you swerve, then it will try to maintain control of the car.... ESP can control each wheel brake seperatly, it monitors how much steering wheel input you are giving, each wheel's speed, lateral force of a turn. Then based on that info, it will cut power output of the engine and apply seperate amounts of force for each wheel to try and keep the car on course that you are aiming for.

Later.