bkw

With the dropping of fall foliage mixed in with morning dew covering the horseshoe exit ramp I lost it. I'm quite comfortable driving with my tail out a little, but was very surprised when the slight understeer turned into snap oversteer. I did as I was trained to and gave the car more gas and tried to work the rear back into place with my right foot. Everything felt great and right when I began to think, 'cool, awd dorifto', all of a sudden the car hooked back up while sideways (so now I'm pointed right at the tree line!) so I lifted and braked. Bad idea. Tires locked and I spun 360 and into the grassy knoll on the side of the road.

No visable damage from what I can see besides a scraped wheel and blown tire. I was able to limp the car into my friends shop where they're checking out the undercarriage and suspension components.

I guess too much technology can be a bad thing sometimes

bkw

Thinking more about this.. I'm guessing it wasnt just the technology behind the car, but rather a culmination of technology + weight of car + soft, non tuned suspension which reloaded that straightened me out suddenly.

Mike_TX

And maybe just a tad of physics, too.

No amount of technology is gonna save your bacon if you violate Newton's immutable laws.

Glad there's no more damage, and that you're okay.

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lumpulus

The tires Locked? Why didn't the anti lock brakes work?

Rpappi

because he was sidways

Touge

Sorry to hear that , but good to see you ok. I actually have pushed the car a bit hard on bear mtn to test it's limits, what I noticed is that in a turn in the wet when I started to get understeer and traction loss at the front wheels I just let of the throttle, now normally on a awd car this is a bad thing, but for some reason on this car it seems to work and a moment later the car was back on track. Weird rt ?. Wonder if the vsa balanced the car for me.

jftjr

No amount of ABS, AWD, VSA, or similar technology will create additional friction between the tires and the road.

UW RL

oh man.... sorry to hear that. That's almost what happened to me, except my VSA was off trying to take a left turn. My RL was oversteering and all of a sudden the car "hooked back up" and that's why I hit the guard rail on my right hand side.

Are you running on the stock POS tires?

jcb-memphis

One of the main reasons I dumped the MXM4 and went with pzero nero m & s tires, aspec rims, and aspec suspension. The stock suspension was too floaty for me.

Granted, physics rules, but soft, floaty suspension can really ruin one's day pretty well too. I suspect it was a mixture of the above. It scares me to thing how hard I would have to push to mess the car up now....but my guess is that the tires were not up to the task.... That being said, the stock tires will likely last twice as long as my Pirellis....so they have their place.

Glad you are ok!

JB

bkw

Yup, still on the same stock tires. Just got the word from the shop.. looks like theres no serious damage, and everything was brought back into spec after an alignment.

If this werent my wife's car, It would definitely have had suspension and footwork done. But after this awakening, I'll look into some suspension bits as I'm sure that if my wife were put in the same situation, things wouldve ended up being much worse.

db22

If this werent my wife's car, It would definitely have had suspension and footwork done. But after this awakening, I'll look into some suspension bits as I'm sure that if my wife were put in the same situation, things wouldve ended up being much worse.[/QUOTE]
That's pretty harsh, are you sure that your wife doesn't read this stuff!

bkw

Hah! She knows! We used to attend track days and autox's together and I've personally seen her panic in uncontrolled situations . She's better now, and I do trust her in the s2000, but we're both quite unfamiliar with the RL when driven at anything beyond 75%. Perhaps a few autox sessions are in order with the RL.

UW RL

hey bkw, you got any pics of the damage?

neuronbob

One more reason for a suspension and tire upgrade. These stock tires blow (no pun intended). I've tried to push the car in sharp on-ramps to test the SH-AWD. While I can do things I couldn't in my TL, the stock rubber is a definite limitation as I can feel them start to lose adhesion.

I'm glad you weren't hurt, could have been much worse!

db22

1 Glad you are OK
2 It may have been a lot worse without the technology.
3 Unless you have a lot of power available the "power through" with AWD is not very easy. I find that it only works if I'm in manual, with the revs above 4.5K so that the power comes on fast and hard to use the AWD.
Not that I'm an expert but I do like to pactice in case I ever need it!
For tips on 4 wheel drifting - watch the WRC.

bkw

Nope, no pics yet. I'm planning on changing the oil this weekend so while the car is up, I'll go under and inspect everything myself.

Picked up the car last night and it appears that all is well.

Oh, and I really wish that speed would bring back the WRC!

db22

Oh, and I really wish that speed would bring back the WRC![/QUOTE]

Until the USA stops embracing "The Dukes of Hazard" mentality, stops thinking that every turn is a left turn and that thinking that an F150 is a "cool" ride then you will not see the WRC again.

bkw

I find it puzzling how we Americas love NASCAR, yet cannot embrace a 'real' drivers' sports like the WRC and F1.

Mike_TX

They're too much like rugby and World Cup soccer.
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db22

Did you mean that Rugby is like the WRC and Soccer is like F1?

This is going to take some explaining.

Mike_TX

Nah, I just mean rally and F1 are a little too "foreign" for American tastes. We tend to like home-grown sports like football, NASCAR and tractor pulls.
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jftjr

It's all about attention span. In an F1 race, you might see, oh, I dunno, 2 or 3 lead changes, if you're lucky, and maybe four or five great passes.

WRC? You get to sit and wait 2-3 minutes for a car to come around, you see them take one turn, then you cheer, then you wait again.

But NASCAR? Bubba can plant his butt in a stadium seat (or better yet, a beach chair on the roof of his RV in the infield, yee-haw!) and watch 20 or so effectively identical cars turn left, and he can see the whole thing without turning his head too much. It's loud, there's bright colors, and lots of smash-em-ups! Wooo-EEE!

It's the same reason Soccer isn't popular in the US -- you have to wait for ages for a 'good ball' and then there might be 2 goals in a game... the rest of the time, there's a bunch of guys running around and kicking long balls out. Snooze fest, unless you understand the subtleties of the game.

db22

unless you understand the subtleties of the game.[/QUOTE]

At least you gave yourself an out!

jftjr

At least you gave yourself an out![/QUOTE]


If you don't understand the subtleties of diving to the turf and acting like you've just taken a round of rock salt out of a shotgun, until the ref decides not to pull out a card and you pop back up and get right back into play, well, then, I guess soccer would be pretty boring.

db22

If you don't understand the subtleties of diving to the turf and acting like you've just taken a round of rock salt out of a shotgun, until the ref decides not to pull out a card and you pop back up and get right back into play, well, then, I guess soccer would be pretty boring. [/QUOTE]

Before Admin shuts us down, we had better get back to turning left!