I don't know about the rest of you, but in Wisconsin, when the temperature rises above 25F, I consider that a heat wave. So in anticipation for spring, I (kinda prematurely) switched from my winter snows back to my PS2s.

I was making a left hand turn through an intersection on a moist, but not terribly wet, non iced road. As I was coming through, spun out at about 25-30mph. I wasn't accelerating, the road was not sanded. I made a complete 360, but thankfully did not bump the curb.

Now, I know the tires tend to be a little hard when the temperature is cold, but I'm no newbie to 911 turbos...I have driven both the 996 and 997 through multiple winters on both summer and winter tires...and never encountered a spin out. PSM was on, but never flickered or assisted.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

(For all of you who have the pleasure of living in non snow states...I hate you.)

 

HAS to have been ice..

 

Sounds like ice. You should have gotten on the gas asap.

 

Similar thing happened to me on my 996 a few years ago. Did 180 degrees on the interstate! Light snow/freezing rain; no help from PSM. My take is that when weather gets below 40 degrees, non-winter tires become a hockey puck. I decided never to take the P-car on normal tires when it gets below 40 and the roads are wet.

 

It was ICE. The PSM didnt' fail you. You can't see black ice and unfortunately you are against nature and physics. Glad no one was hurt and your car was okay too.

I have hit it before in many cars with Traction Control and Stability Control and when you hit Black Ice it doesn't help.

 

There was no ice. Pavement was wet, slightly, but temperature was well over 40...heat wave in Wisconsin. Slide came at the end of the turn...I didn't punch it...I was very gentle on the gas coming out of the corner. PSM didn't even flicker to help.

 

if it wasnt ice, it was oil seeping up from the road as that was NOT a PSM failure...

 

No matter what you may think or do, PSM is not invincible. It can only help you in certain circumstances but it cannot as someone here said, overcome the laws of physics. The PSM operates under certain circumstances and has a certain amount of leeway before it kicks in. I also believe that it operates if you have some throttle input dialed in too. Maybe you didn't have enough dialed in at the time of the spinout?

 

PSM works in sensing how the tire rotating speeds vary from corner to corner IIRC. If you hit ice and all 4 tires are sliding/turning at the same speed I would guess that PSM might not activate.