Ahh yes, good ole Dynamic Traction Control. Otherwise known as: "Goddamit why won't my car move when I need it to?"

So, long story short: Beware this wonderful tool in the Winter. Not only does it prevent your rear wheels from spinning but it prevents you from quick acccel on a turn if there is any slippage. The throttle will totally cut-out, bog down, and instead of really zipping and moving you will find yourself going 3mph with a truck's headlights staring down at you as you think to yourself "why the F is my car not moving?".

Beware DTC. I'm disabling this damn thing from now on.

 

are you talking about DSC?

DSC = no movement on ice and deep snow
DTC = some movement; limited wheel slippage
DSC/DTC off = wheel spin fiesta

 

Its about using the tools at the right time, I had a massive crash in a Ford Mondeo ST24v back in 2000, I hit standing water the other side of a small hidden crest in the road, hit the knee deep water the other side at 60mph, car snapped sideways, I dropped it a gear and planted the throttle and tried to pull the car out of the massive tail slide ( being a fwd car ), TC kicked in and basicaly gave me a dead throttle causing me to do a 180 backwads into a hedge row and small ditch and roll 3x.............

Now with FWD I would always have TC off, its basicaly for lame people who do not understand the concept of throttle control ( and I wish to this day I had got into the habbit of turning my mondeo TC off )

WIth my E60 on the other hand, unless im in the mood to play, or pulling from a wet T junction / similar my DTC/TC whatever you wanna call it is always switched on, its a fabulous system with some small flaws that you just need to understand to get the most from it.

 

Here is a thread that will straighten out some inevitable terminology confusion.

http://forums.e60.net/index.php?showtopic=1776&hl=

 

i thimnk u were on DSC. BMW reccommends to turn DSC off when in deep snow or digging urself out of snow. DTC gives you some spinning. much more than DSC. DSC works EXCELLENT in rain, great in snow driving at 40 mph, and sucks under 10 mph.

 

525 and 530's.. what wheel spin?

 

Isnt the'system designed to give you max traction/acceleration given the road conditions? In other words, with dsc/dtc off, would you really have been able to accelerate faster?

 

I think the problem is DSC is too heavy handed in it's approach.
As soon as you get wheel spin it cuts everything to bring it back under control. It will suddenly just snap back into line. So, if you floor it out of a junction as soon as it spins it will kill the throttle and you'll be going nowhere (albeit fairly briefly). I've experimented with this and for a quick getaway in slippery conditions turning DTC on will allow the wheels to spin some and so won't kill the throttle. It's much more progressive. It will catch the slide gradually so that it doesn't snap back into line. Alternatively, be more careful with the throttle when the roads are slippery and use the throttle correctly!
I also believe DTC only works at lower speeds and I presume the stability control part is turned off so it won't catch the car if it's understeering off the road, for example.

 

I can fill in the blanks at my next trackday if anyone still wants to know

 

and, hold down dsc button for 10 secs until the dsc/dtc light goes back out turns on some brake-controlled limited slip simulation without the nanny-control.