Ecoboost Flex turns into FWD when traction control is turned off?

[thefleshrocket]

I decided to do some performance testing with my Dragy in my wife's 2019 Flex Limited, which has an Unleashed tune. I did a 0-130 run, starting with the transmission in S mode and a full brake-torque launch. The car got out of the hole pretty good but there was a yellow light on the dash that flashed and felt like it was pulling a bit of power in first gear, so I decided to do another run, and this time to disable the traction control. With the same brake torque launch, the tires lit up and tach went to redline almost instantly, then shifted to second, went to redline, then shifted to third, then finally gained traction. Since the car was only going about 30mph at that point, it downshifted back to second gear and lit up the front tires again. I gave up at that point.

With the traction control disabled, I assumed that the front tires would light up a bit from the dig but that some power would quickly get transferred rearward and that it would just "go" at that point, but the amount of wheelspin was what I would have expected if the Flex was FWD. When I got home, I peered under the car with a flashlight just to make sure I hadn't misremembered from the last time I was under the Flex, and sure enough, there's a rear differential and halfshafts going to the rear wheels, so it's clearly AWD.

Apparently disabling the traction control is not the faster way to accelerate hard in this Flex, but is this level of wheelspin normal?

 

[kryptto]

I get plenty of front end spin with TC off. Even hard acceleration through right hand turns. The front break free and off to the races I go.

These cars aren't full time FW, however the power is from the front.

 

[b4black]

So you turned the traction control off and lite up the tires? That's exactly what you should suspect.

The traction control was pulling power because you were overpowering the tires. If you want the traction control off, you have to feather the throttle. Or get much better tires.