I went out last night, temps were super cold. There was a 100m downhill section of black ice that had the ABS working overtime. Immediatly afterwards the car wouldn’t rev at all.

Are the two systems linked? Can the engine management relate unusually cold temps to ABS activity and then reduce maximum revs to prevent skidding?

Just curious.

No

ABS doesn’t but traction control does. If you have traction control it will normally flash a warning symbol when it’s actived. You should be able to turn it off, which is actually advisable if you are stuck in snow or ice.

no

^ True

Got stuck part way up Carter Bar due to forgetting to turn off ESP after restarting car.

Are you sure it wasn’t just really icy still and your traction control was limiting the revs?

If you have traction control it will normally flash a warning symbol when it’s actived.

Ahh, perhaps thats what the warning light was that came up on the dash.

just been talking about this in the office

depends a bit how old the car is I think. mine’s pretty old & traction control (non-switchable) involves braking the wheel without traction. when both are struggling it involves stopping the car from moving at all 🙄 it’s an automatic too 🙄 🙄 🙁

more modern cars “think” more and I bet that’s what you’ve got – my brother once flew his car off a bump in the road and it went onto some kind of emergency go-slow. had to reset by turning off the ignition but was then OK

It’s normally an icon of a car with wavey skid marks behind it (snigger) a bit like the slippy surface road sign.

@scaredypants

That sounds more likely to be some sort of fuel cutoff switch designed to got engine power in a collision.

The brakes felt as though they were trying to slow the car down for perhaps a minute or so, then full power was restored.

I’ll have a look at the handbook.