Traction Control

ChevMech · August 13, 2014

I'm really confused as to what this new technology is supposed to do for us. I find myself disabling it more and more as I go on. Yesterday I hooked my 20 ft bumper pull to the back of my 2009 Silverado 2500 HD 4WD to pick up a parts suburban.

The title weight on the trailer is 2300 lbs and according to the interwebs, the suburban is supposed to weigh about 6800 lbs. I know my truck is rated to handle that with no problem.

This is where things got a little squirrelly. I was approaching a turn. I was slowing down from about 40 mph to turning speed very gradually. I had the gain on the trailer set to about 8.5 and I could feel they were working fine. Being in oil country, the road is a little rough in spots. When I was about to turn, I hit a rough patch. As soon as I hit it, the brake pedal went down like the ABS had just kicked in. This caused the back end to jump to the ditch side of the road. I grabbed the brake controller and let the trailer brakes work a little harder. It straightened up and I was able to turn with no incident.

My question is: Is there someone that has experienced this? Is there a way to prevent it from happening again? I turned off the stabillitrac but I'm not sure if that will help or not.

fondupot · August 13, 2014

You can turn off traction control and stabilitrac all you want. It automatically reengages over 35 mph. I'm not sure if there is a way to disable those two features without losing ABS.