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Adjustable Stability
Control!
Whiteline's Black Box is a handling
revolution
by Julian Edgar
At a glance...
Finger-tip adjustment of stability control
action
Easily fitted
Available now!
Walk into a suspension workshop and you could be forgiven for thinking nothing’s changed in fifty
years.
You’d like better handling, Sir? No problem – here we have new, shortened and stiffer springs. And
you’ll need new dampers – yes, here are our better quality, adjustable shocks. Improved bushes and
stiffer anti-roll bars? Yep, they’ll also need to be on your list…
But snap back to current reality and it doesn’t take much nous to realise that confining handling
changes to just the mechanical bits is fundamentally flawed. What’s been missing until now is an
ability to adjust the factory electronic systems that, in many cars, make more of a difference to real-
world handling outcomes than pretty much anything you’d normally do with springs or sway bars.
Want to have instantly accessible presets for wet weather, beginner driver and the track? Turn the
knob…
This is a revolution in handling modification that cannot be understated in its importance. Not only can
you adjust the handling balance of the standard car, you can also modify the suspension (with those
springs, bars and dampers) – and then adjust the stability control to match the mechanical
modifications!
Or what if you boost engine power and find that the car is more inclined to power oversteer or power
understeer? Again, simply adjust the Black Box so that the stability control system works perfectly
with the increased power.
The Whiteline Black Box can never be outdated, no matter what changes you later make to the car. If
you want improved handling, that makes the Black Box the first modification to buy.
Many people (and especially performance enthusiasts) have a completely wrong idea of how electronic
stability control functions – and its benefits and disadvantages.
If the system detects that the car is not following the path dictated by the steering input, it knows the
car is sliding. If the car is not turning as much as the steering indicates it should be, the car must be
understeering. If the car is turning more than the steering input, it must be oversteering.
If either of these conditions is detected, ESP brakes individual wheels and/or reduces engine power.
These interventions are designed to return the car’s path to that being requested (via the steering) by
the driver.
Some cars even have switchable levels of ESP, where for example the car has to be sideways almost
beyond the point of recovery before the ESP comes in.
The sensitivity of the ESP, and whether it lets a car have more oversteer (or more understeer) before
it intervenes, is entirely up to the car company’s policies and its engineers.
Electronic stability control is known by a wide range of abbreviations – ESP, ESC, VDC, etc. Don’t
worry about what it is called – all manufacturers use the same fundamental approach.
Black Box
So what does this wondrous modification device look like? As the pics show, the Black Box is, well,
black, and, um, a box. It’s about the size of a small paperback novel and has on its front face two
pushbuttons (accessed through the flexible membrane faceplate), a two-line back-lit LCD and a knob.
There are also two LEDs visible – a red and a green.
Active - stability control behaviour is altered on the basis of the selected Black Box preset;
Mode LED is green
Tuning – the action of the stability control can be altered real time (this mode is also used to
set the parameters for each of the presets); Mode LED is red
After starting the car, the user has to scroll through a (long!) warning and product disclaimer notice
before pressing OK. Because at this stage no presets will have been set, the next step is to enter
Active (tuning) mode, a process that requires a tricky simultaneous pushing of the two buttons. In
tuning mode, two controls are available. Because the Black Box is a world first, the developers have
had to invent new terms to describe the action of the tuning adjustments.
‘Volume’ describes how much action is permitted by the ESP. When Volume is set to 100, the ESP
system is as sensitive as standard. When Volume is set to 0, the ESP has no input. So for example, if
you have a car that has ESP that intervenes too early, all you need to do is to dial-back the Volume a
bit.
‘Bias’ describes how much understeer or oversteer occurs. So if you want the car to oversteer a lot,
you set the Bias control to +40. If you want the car to understeer a lot, you set the Bias control to
-40. If you’re happy with the factory understeer/oversteer, set it to 0.
With the presets previously calibrated, you’d normally get into the car, OK the warning and then select
the right preset for the conditions.
Testing
We were able to drive a VE Commodore fitted with the Black Box. The main venue was the Wakefield
Park track but we were also able to drive the Commodore on both bitumen and dirt roads.
(Incidentally, when ESP is intervening, the brake lights are turned on, so explaining the fact that in the
pics, the Commodore appears to be being braked through every corner!)
How it Works
Conclusion
Legalities
Whiteline makes it clear that they regard the Black Box as being sold for race track use only. From
a legal perspective, that’s a reasonable approach to take - but we see the greatest potential for
the system being on normal road cars.
If you’re unfamiliar with electronic modification of cars, changing the action of the stability control
system might seem terribly dangerous and risky. But, in plain speak, that’s simply bullshit.
Modifying any aspect of a car’s handling characteristics – even something as simple as fitting new
anti-roll bars – means you have chosen to step away from the factory-developed package, with
both the benefits and disadvantages that result from doing so.
A car with a big rear anti-roll bar can be lethal in wet conditions; a car with lowered suspension
might bottom-out badly enough on poor roads to crack the suspension mounts; even fitting just
stiffer bushes can result in more road noise and vibration.
If you have the Black Box fitted and then decide one dark wet night to go out with a bunch of
mates to find a local roundabout and do some random real-time tuning of the device – well, you’ll
probably crash. Just as you would have crashed if you’d fitted lots of different springs and then
tested in the same way.
We see absolutely no problem with the Black Box being fitted to a road car and tuned on the road.
However, such an approach needs to be done in a careful, systematic and considered way. Do it
like an idiot and the risks are high – just like they’ve always been. Do it properly and we can’t see
any issues.
We doubt whether insurance companies will like the Black Box, so if you chose to have the device
fitted, you should realise the insurance implications.
Footnote
As this article was launched, news came that Black Box development and sales have moved to a
new company, eEmotiv. Still headed by Jim Gurieff, the man behind the Black Box development at
Whiteline, the Black Box is available in Version 1.1, with Version 2 in development. Contact:
sales@eemotiv.com
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