You use the BRAKES to stop and if you do not then you BREAK something. Get it right people. Gawd!!!!

Oh Merry Christmas everyone. I am smelling that turkey I put in the oven four hrs ago. Yummy.

 

Hey people.

I registered on this forum for the sole purpose of reviving this thread and therefore cause potential annoyance.

I see a lot of pro-ABS users here. I was also searching for a way to turn off the ABS on my Jazz, you see, here in Norway, we have extra taxes for studded winter tires (Because of increased amount of "float dust" in the air in the cities.), and since the winter tires w/o studs are just as effective, if not better than, studded tires in a lot of situations, and the studs wear out faster since the main roads are usually plowed and near-dry. There is very little reason to choose the studded alternative.

So I drive my car on non studded winter tires, type Yokohama IG30.
The problem is, on a lot of the small roads, they do not salt and sand frequently enough, but they still remove all the snow, and with nobody driving studded tires, the asphalt is polished with fine snow powder blowing around, with the heat and friction from non studded tires. So into some intersections from small roads you can have maybe 60-80m of invisible ice.

So i drive along the road, assuming i can stop in time knowing the road is slippery, start braking softly because I hate that damn sound and feel from the ABS. But the ABS suddenly kicks in despite my efforts, the wheels lock and unlock frequently, I release the brake pedal hoping to get the wheels rolling and starting normal brake procedure again, but OH NO! There seems to be some sort of time delay on that friggin' ABS, so when I press the pedal gently again, it instantly locks and slides straight ahead. I could have stopped A LOT faster if the wheels did not lock up all the time.

I am not anywhere near being some professional driver, but when you brake, you should brake as close to loosing friction as you can, if you want to stop in a shorter distance. Initiate braking gently, quickly find the greatest point of friction, release brake gently into corner.
Then for maintaining the speed. Start giving throttle gently at the start of corner so that the engine will not brake, increase throttle gradually to the highest point without loosing grip, be as near full throttle as you can exiting the corner.

I can stop faster on my bloody bicycle than in my car on winter conditions! In the same speeds! Using the front brake only!

Not to mention the CVT gearbox, the D is just plain dangerous in the winter, a lot safer to drive on the S and L.

ABS probably have it's use on some summer conditions, maybe with drunk drivers, or with grandma behind the wheel and oil on the road.

 

Here's the crux of your problem. Driving a car with ABS brakes like one without is an obvious error. When the ABS engages, don't let up. The sound you dread is the sound of the ABS doing what you want to do manually, but faster and better. Your braking "procedure" obviously defeats the whole purpose of ABS! Honda has a very good system.

Hard to imagine you could have it more backwards. Your cornering "procedure" works great in almost any conditions except the one you describe: sheer ice. If you live in Norway and disconnect your ABS, I guess you'll learn your lesson!

Before you complain that I live in CA and don't know anything about Winter driving, please know I lived most of my adult life in places that get several feet of snow each year, including a lot of driving small mountain roads in the Alps and Jura.

 

The Tires stop the car.

 

Walls stop cars.

Sometimes the driver can stop the car too.

This thread is epic....ally-retarded.

 

I'm crying

 

Well, I am not really old enough to have driven that many cars without ABS.
I do not understand the problem with my cornering procedure anyway, as described I want to be sure the car has the appropriate speed before the corner, braking in a corner reduces potential grip on the tires. And as far as i see it, you should try to make sure the tires have as much friction as possible with the ground, no matter what conditions. No friction = no grip, as far as I see it.

The problem is: The ABS will kick in if only one wheel slips, when the system tries to control the other tires, all of them start slipping in turn, I do not know why, but I do know that all the wheels on my fit start slipping, if I keep the pedal pressed down the car goes straight ahead. If i try to restart the braking procedure to avoid the ABS kicking in, the ABS kicks in immediately, before i even feel the brakes doing anything, not letting me brake properly with the small measure of grip remaining.

If i just keep the pedal pressed it goes just straight ahead.

And if it is even more slippery the ABS will not kick in at all, if all the tires slide at the same time the ABS never triggers, it has happened to me several times before speed bumps and such. (I do not drive fast, I try as well as I can to maintain speed limits)

Edit:
After some experimentation, I see that this almost never happens when it's warmer than -20C (think that's around -4F).
It happens more often below -20c and nearby salted roads.

 

wow...is this thread for real???

 

So to answer the question, yes you can disable abs. If this were a goal of mine I would intercept the wheel speed sensor wires and hook them to 2 double post double switch relays and wire the relays to a switch in the cabin. If the car cannot read the wheel speed sensors it cannot engage abs. I'm sure there's an easier way but this is the first thing that comes to mind.