E60BEEMER

that would be a risk especially in the water laden roads we have here in the UK, But i can understand how the loss of power can hinder the pick up.

One of those q, were the road condition has to be considered also!!!

Great though

redwhiteblue

When you deactive everything by holding the button for greater than 5 seconds-you do see the little triangle thingy in the dash-specifiying that everything is completely off and that light stays there in the dash area.

Atleast for me, the confusion part is the whole pressing the DTC to "turn dtc ON". In my head I first thought of DTC as bmw's traction control system which prevented wheel spin at all-basically I thought it detected wheel spin and cut engine power as needed. I thought of DSC as the stability control that monitored yaw sensors and used a combination of braking power and engine cutdown to modify the cars position to keep you in a straight line.

I think that is not correct atleast according to bmw. DSC I believe simply involves everything including monitoring wheel spin, yaw sensors etc. DTC is a "baby" DSC version-simply more lenient as you all have said.

What is confusing is if you are technically "turning ON DTC" by pressing the button once then it sounds like you are turning traction control ON-which to me would mean you would not get any wheel spin. If you look at the message that pops up it says something like DTC on, DSC limited. Which to me also meant ok you have traction control on so your wheels wont spin but DSC (yaw sensors and such) are limited and will not kick in as easy.

That is not the case however. It is actually more like turning DTC ON by hitting the button actually turns traction control OFF to some degree but keeps dsc pretty active. For example I can spin my wheels quite a bit with just DTC on but the minute my car is not pointed straight ahead I notice DSC still kicks in so it is still quite sensitive to kicking in.

Basically like we all deduced, DTC on can be thought of as a little more sport, lenient version of DSC which is basically in between full DSC and nothing at all.

This is way more confusion than necessary. I guerentee no other car maker, none I have driven has ever been so confusing. Even vettes, new ones, I have driven were really simple. They had Strability control buttons that could be set at either OFF, Sport, or On-which simply meant as it says-either its off, its on a bit but not as much or fully on. Not sure why bmw made this so confusing.

I remember the day I bought it and the dealer was going over it I never understood it-it is sad it takes this much discussion to understand this-I now realize 90 percent of owners probably do not know the true function of all these settings. Most people do not realize DTC will allow you some give but still have DSC kick in-It is the setting I choose now most all the time since I do like the safety of DSC but just dont like it kicking in quite so easy.

I much prefer settings on most other cars and the M cars where there is a setting to let you push the car closer to the limits, swing the car around understeering quite a bit and spin the tires more easily without the DSC kicking in so easily-even with DTC it still kicks in easily-we need a setting that allows even more pushing without dsc kicking in but we dont have it on the e60

One question I had-if you hold DTC for 10 seconds or more-the triange first goes on-after 5 seconds and then after 10 seconds it disapears. I have read on here that it means DSC is still completely off but it makes it so there is no triangle in the display however DSC is still off. However I am thinking if the triangle is not there it means holding it for 10 seconds actually re-activates DSC

my2007

Redwhiteblue, this DSC/DTC is indeed very confusing but I think you have got it all sorted out from the way you have described your experience. I guess if you really want to have fun and not wanting the DSC kicking in to spoil it would mean turning off DSC/DTC completely (triangle sign lit). You mentioned that you often drive with DTC on, do you have to turn it on everytime you drive the car or once you leave it on it stays on even if you turn off the engine? Ya, I was not sure why the manual said to to press and hold DTC button but not more than 10 secs to deactivate DSC. You mentioned that by holding more than 10 secs, the triangle goes off (like you said I will take this as DSC is now on again) and DSC is still deactivated, is this the case, have you tried it? This can be dangerous as one could be fooled to think that DSC is on when it is actually not. Thanks!

Rudy

One small note -- when using DTC, my car will not allow me to set the active cruise contol. Not sure if this is an ACC thing or if it's true for all cruise controls...

radioham

i wish i hadnt looked at this topic,,,,,, just used the last of the paracetomols and got to get a lie down in a darkened room now. hope i can sleep and stop thinking about dtc dsc and 10 second turn offs.
thanks for the explanations ,and thank you bmw tech's .

Ricracing

Yes, indeed.

But if one wants to smoke the tires (always nice but costly), all off.