So this morning, we got a little snow in Chicago. I had about 1/2" in my driveway, so seeing as I've never had my ESP light come on, I'd test it. It worked. Dropped the clutch at about 2500rpm, and not an inch of slip occurred, and the car just took off (albeit slowly). ESP kicked in, all was happy.

So driving into work, I hit a few snow patches here and there, and ESP came on a couple times. Cool.

I get about 2/3rd of the way to work, driving on clean road (wet, but clean), and ESP kicks in, and continues to blink what seemed about every rotation of the tires (1/2 second or so). After 6 or so times, I shut it off (I could feel braking going on in the front-left tire, and could hear a grinding noise). I got out, and checked to see that I didn't have a patch of frozen snow or something on the tire, but all 4 tires were clean.

So I got going again, turned ESP back on, and it started doing it again. This went on for about 6 more times (turned on, did it again, turned off for a few miles).

About 10 miles from work, it suddenly stopped doing it. So I left ESP on, and it behaved the rest of the drive in.

When I got to work, I had an empty snow-covered parking lot to play with. Just to make sure ESP was still working, I repeated my experiment that I had done in my driveway earlier. ESP came on, and functioned as normal.

So, anyone have any idea what was going on here? Anyone else seen this?

 

I get quite a bit of slippage on '040s below 40°F, ESP blinks away

 

and I got no blinkage when the road was slushie and such. Only a couple single 'blips' when hitting large patches of snow. This was definitely not normal, what was going on.

 

ESP anomally. Sounds like maybe it was "learning"? Other experiences are normal.

 

bumpy road?

 

...Could it have maybe been patches of ice that just looked like water? I know my ESP light comes on quite a bit when I'm driving in the snow, but that's because I'm getting a pretty good bit of wheel spin. I don't think it has used the brakes except when I actually start to slide though.

I have to say I'm VERY glad I have ESP on my car. It has never done anything that I wouldn't want it to do, and it does an amazing job of correcting for oversteer. Any time I start to get a bit of oversteer, a split second later it's like the Hand of God comes down and makes my TT go straight again. I don't think I'll ever buy a car without an ESP equivalent again. If you live in an area thta gets snow, and that ESP offer is still good, you REALLY should consider getting it.

 

I got some a few weeks ago from TireRack (installed at TireRack even) and I'm not sure if I'm expecting too much from them or what... I'm sure a big part of this is that I'm coming from what I bet is a much lighter car (1989 Toyota Camry) but it seems like my TT kinda plows through icy/snowy corners a lot more than I would expect. My Camry was by no means grippy in the snow, but when I took a 90 degree turn at 5 mph, I never plowed straight through unless I was on the gas or it was REALLY icy. However, this is a regular occurance with the TT and P7000SS All Seasons. Do I need a different technique when driving an AWD car in the snow, or am I just expecting too much out of these tires?

 

Because I got out of the car to look at the tires/wheels when it first started, and I looked at the road. It was just water. No ice. Strange part was, it was only one wheel, front-left wheel. It was consistently braking and grinding the entire time. real strange.

 

Not sure what you mean by plowing through. I ran 'em through their paces this morning, and I couldn't get the the wheels to slide no matter what I did. When I left my driveway (see my original post about what I did), after ESP kicked in, and I had gotten a little speed up, I MASHED on the brakes, and the car just stopped. No sliding at all.

I've not had a single problem with the P7000's so far. When you say 'plow through', you mean you slid through, or what?

 

Nope. I294, very, VERY smooth interstate.