VitaminJ
Well-known member
This should go without saying but: DO THE FOLLOWING AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Over the weekend I entered an autocross with my 2013 Nissan Leaf. I had seen posts over the years of other people autocrossing their Leafs and read all of their experiences. The #1 thing that kept popping out at me was the very intrusive stability control system which will intervene during "spirited" driving and cut power to the front wheels, or apply brakes to one or more wheels to straighten out a sliding car.
The Leaf has a button which turns off TCS (Traction Control System) but this only applies for straight-line driving. As soon as steering angle is put into the car, the TCS comes on and pulls power when it senses a spinning tire. VDC (Vehicle Dynamic Control) is on 100% of the time and cannot be disengaged by the driver. VDC uses the ABS hardware to pulse each wheel in order to maintain "stability," this means when the Leaf starts getting into a drift the VDC will stop it.
Anyone who knows about performance driving knows that these systems severely limit the driver's ability to drive fast around corners. For years driver's have found ways of disabling factory electronic driving aids and I sought to do the same to my Leaf.
I went through every fuse box in whole car and found all fuses for ABS or VDC, there turned out only to be 3 of them. Please see the photos below for their locations.
After disabling the systems the car drove normally in every way except for having a bunch of warning lights on the dash. Of course it also disabled all 3 electronic systems and the Leaf could be thrown around like any other FWD hatchback. During autocrossing my wife and I experienced spinning tires with full motor power on corner exits, locking up all 4 wheels in smokey slides, lift-off oversteer on corner entry, and all of the other fun stuff cars can do when you let them!
Naturally, the process is completely reversible, just reinsert the fuses where they came from.
I have created another thread for my autocross experience here and I will be posting some video from the event there.
Over the weekend I entered an autocross with my 2013 Nissan Leaf. I had seen posts over the years of other people autocrossing their Leafs and read all of their experiences. The #1 thing that kept popping out at me was the very intrusive stability control system which will intervene during "spirited" driving and cut power to the front wheels, or apply brakes to one or more wheels to straighten out a sliding car.
The Leaf has a button which turns off TCS (Traction Control System) but this only applies for straight-line driving. As soon as steering angle is put into the car, the TCS comes on and pulls power when it senses a spinning tire. VDC (Vehicle Dynamic Control) is on 100% of the time and cannot be disengaged by the driver. VDC uses the ABS hardware to pulse each wheel in order to maintain "stability," this means when the Leaf starts getting into a drift the VDC will stop it.
Anyone who knows about performance driving knows that these systems severely limit the driver's ability to drive fast around corners. For years driver's have found ways of disabling factory electronic driving aids and I sought to do the same to my Leaf.
I went through every fuse box in whole car and found all fuses for ABS or VDC, there turned out only to be 3 of them. Please see the photos below for their locations.
After disabling the systems the car drove normally in every way except for having a bunch of warning lights on the dash. Of course it also disabled all 3 electronic systems and the Leaf could be thrown around like any other FWD hatchback. During autocrossing my wife and I experienced spinning tires with full motor power on corner exits, locking up all 4 wheels in smokey slides, lift-off oversteer on corner entry, and all of the other fun stuff cars can do when you let them!
Naturally, the process is completely reversible, just reinsert the fuses where they came from.
I have created another thread for my autocross experience here and I will be posting some video from the event there.