Me and my wife currently own a 2011 Golf TDI 6 speed manual. Well we opted to give it back to VW. So we have been looking for a used Prius C. I noticed on the 2015 Prius C they have a Traction control disable button. Can you just install this button on the 2012 - 2014? I wonder if the wires are their? Anyways my wife will mostly drive the car but I am planning on some suspension mods if we get one. Thank You
If there's not a button for traction control disable, I wouldn't go looking for a work around. Traction control disabling would be part of Maintenance Mode, which as the name impies, is strictly for maintenance. There are strong cautions in the Repair Manual to not drive the car in Maintenance Mode, at the risk of damaging the transaxle. Regarding the suspension mods: maybe wait till your wife requests them?
I know on some vehicles the wire harness would be their and the blank cover instead of a switch. If I do end up buying one I may go looking for some wires not plugged in, maybe Toyota programmed it in to the software but they were just afraid of people abusing it. And for the wife she likes how sporty the Golf TDI drive so she won't mind the suspension mods.
I know this post is two months old, but I'll just drop this here: You do not want to disable the TC on a SP hybrid like Toyota's. The big electric motor IS, for all intents and purposes, the transmission. The rotor in that motor is heavy. When the tires lose traction, the rotor accelerates, and when the tires "catch", it tries to decelerate the heavy rotor instantly. This can cause catastrophic transmission damage. Much like having one tire in the air spinning with engine power, and then dropping it on the pavement...only worse. People love to disable TC in the snow in order to get "unstuck" and rock the car. This will destroy a Prius trans-axle, which is why they don't put a TC defeat button in it.
Then why did Toyota put a button to disable traction control outright in the newer models? If TC is disabled, the same risks apply regardless of the year of Prius c.
The TC disable button is there to meet us state regulations on emissions testing with dynamometers. The traction control normally won't allow the front wheels to spin up the rollers while the back wheels are still. 2012-2014 Cs allow this with maintenance mode, but it's difficult to activate. I imagine they added the physical button because of the way the laws were written. Bottom line is- the traction control works well. I've never had a problem driving in the snow or getting stuck. So many people think that getting unstuck means spinning the wheels really fast. This is bad. This creates ice, and digs a hole. A slow crawl gets you unstuck. The button is not there for you to get unstuck with. It's there for emissions testing compliance.
