Can DSA / traction control be switched off?
 

Hi all, as the title suggests really.

What with the snow we're having at the moment, I'm having a bit of a problem, as my step daughter has work today and also pretty much every other day early this week (I think Wednesday and Thursday are her days off this week) and the problem is that unless I go on quite a substantial detour, the main route to take her to work is a road that suddenly goes uphill at quite the angle, and at the top is a junction, so as you can imagine, trying to do a hill start on snow where just as you begin to get moving the stupid system cuts in and kills the power is really really irritating.

I have tried holding the button in but that doesn't disable it, I understand it's there for safety, but it's more of a hindrance than anything else in this weather.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance :)

You should just be able to press the button and switch it off?

iirc the dsa box is near glove box on a pillar and can be unplugged did this on one of my old t4s when i had cam sensor problem.... it stayed that way to no ill affect.....

Yeah for some reason mine won't switch off by pressing the button, however I do have a vague recollection of something to do with not being able to turn it off if your engine management light is on, which mine is because my aftermarket 200 cell cat has died, so maybe that's it.

I didn't even attempt to go that way when I collected her from work at about 7pm because the roads are just ridiculous, literally creeping round the town at walking pace and having to resort to gentle engagement of the handbrake because there's just bags of understeer and it simply wouldn't steer around corners, even at about 2 mph, I actually thought I'd had a coil pack go down or something because the TC was constantly on, it's quite a crude system I find as it just makes the car run like it's got a misfire, this was the main road into town earlier on.

I did it the easy way for now and just pulled the abs fuse, unfortunately this however has killed the speedometer as well, so this will be a very temporary until everything thaws out, hopefully by the weekend, I've also got a 2nd full size spare on the way from eBay, so then I can run identical 175 tyres on the front, which has got to help.

Not sure I've read your post correct so apologies if not, but if you are running two differently sized tyres on the driven axle (front) then this may 'upset' the DSA system, I'm paraphrasing as it has a little section on what I mean under the DSA section in the handbook.

No I'm still running my full set of 17s with 205/50 rubber on, but what I did previously was swap the space saver out of this car with the full size spare in my old phase 1, which is a 5 inch wide 15 inch steel that has a proper 175/65 tyre on, and I managed to find another identical spare on eBay, so now I've got two steels, which will be better in winter, I also found some continental winter tyres for a good price which I've ordered, I may have missed the boat this year, but I'll be ready if we get this amount of snow again.

clarkey1984, you *should* be able to disengage the DSA, but the switch or wiring might be playing up.

AFAIK you need to press it for around 4-5 seconds to disengage it - are you pressing it for long enough?

Just a thought.