[s-cars] Installing Torsen diffs and disabling EDL on a 95.5 S6.

theringmeister at triad.rr.com theringmeister at triad.rr.com
Wed Jan 23 13:02:43 PST 2008


since we're following the yellow brick road, I'll go a little further.

When I was in Phoenix training for Audi back in '00, they did a demo of the esp with a huge area of the infield of PIR, a gigantic slick rubber tarp, and a water truck.  They'd take the cars at about 40mph and hit the tarp in a turn, and with ESP on you could feel the computer braking the individual wheel to pull the car back in line.  With it off, the driver was able to use his input to try to maneuver the car back into line, or do a powerslide through if that was what he wanted.  The latter was much less possible with ESP on.

They didn't do much in the way of demonstrating EDL, but in my personal experience I'd have to say I agree with Matt, having both systems in my current vehicles.

All this talk makes me want to put a Torsen diff in my S4 now though, so thanks a lot guys....


--
Wylie Bean
TheRingmeister at triad.rr.com
90 cq
91 90q20v sport
92 UrS4
01 allroad


---- Matt twentyV <matt_20v at yahoo.com> wrote: 
> calvinlc at earthlink.net wrote: >Aside from the better braking under stress, EDL sucks
> 
> Was the EDL on the UrS significantly different than the EDL on the B5 S4's?
> My '01 S4 EDL works pretty darn good.  First, sorry for taking this thread further off-topic.
> 
> I agree- when I had a '00S4 I found the EDL to work transparently nearly as well as the manual diff lock on my '91cq.  A litmus test is turning into my driveway- it is very steep and you must approach at a sharp angle to avoid dragging the nose and tail.  This results in the inner rear wheel lifting off the ground, and the outer front wheel having minimal traction.  With the '91 the lifted wheel would spin in the air, I'd need to lock the rear diff to proceed up the driveway.  The '00 did this transparently- just a bit of ABS chatter.  And performance in snow and ice was right up there too.
> 
> To get straight to your question, IMO on our 95.5 S6 the EDL works about the same as on the '00.  A little ABS chatter but otherwise transparent.  It doesn't drive sideways in snow as willingly as the B-series cars but I think that is more due to the wheelbase than the drivetrain.
> 
> Now this is not the case with our new A4 that has ESP (stability control), and ASR (traction control).  The driveway test seems to confuse the computers and while I do get up the driveway with the usual ABS chatter, it lurches and shudders.  And worse, the drivetrain behavior becomes very unpredicable in snow.  I was at Tahoe a few weeks ago when it snowed 5 feet and charging through snow berms etc. was not at all controlled or comfortable.  I could feel the ASR (which cuts the throttle) kicking in, ABS chatter, some burning clutch smell, and no forward movement.  Fortunately, there's a button to disable all this (except for EDL which cannot be disabled) at which time it works very much like the '95.5 and '00- straightline or sideways.  With a new set of Pilot Alpin snows on the car it was quite unstoppable (given the usual ground clearance constraints of course)- provided I remembered to hit the ESP disable button.  It also gets up the driveway with much less drama when
>  disabled.
> 
> -Matt
> 
>        
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