LighTTnin

I was driving in the City... not going anywhere over 45mph... a car changes lanes into mine during a corner and I turn away from the corner fast to avoid him.... I am not sure what happened.... but Im pretty sure I hit the brake at some point, before I knew it my foot was hard on the brake and I was going backwards since the car did a 180.... THANK GOD nothing happened to me, I ended up on the sidewalk right before the bridge... didnt hit a single thing except the sidewalk... lucky!!! 30 more feet and I would have been going down the mountain into the river (for all u DCers it was above Rock Creek Pkwy going over Conn. Ave) a LONG way down the mountain. Anyway, the tow truck came 2 1/2 hrs later and they took it to Tischer.... going tomorrow to see what the damage was, although I can tell u right now that from what I saw the (ok here is where Im not sure of my Mech lingo) tie-rod (the one that steers I guess) was "broken off" from the assembly on the side of the wheel. Therefore leaving my pass side front completely un-movable.... when we lifted it to align it for the tow truck the suspension didnt look messed up... it hung just as low as the other tire.... I have my fingers crossed!!

Anyway... it got me thinking.... 45mph in the city and the back comes out.... maybe MK II isn't such a bad idea after all.... I always thought I never went fast enough for it..... can anyone speculate whether this might have happened with MK II..... I kinda feel like I should have done the ESP..... that was the last thing I thought about when my whole life flashed in front of me.

Anyway... my 2 cents and my too close encounter with disaster.....

BussaTT

You might've hit the curb hard enough to need a new wheel/tire too.

The key with front-wheel drive is if you turn too sharply and the back lets loose you've got to turn away from the spin(intuitive) and give it gas NOT brakes to "snap it" back in line(NOT intuitive.) Jumping on the gas is NOT what your reflexes want to do without some driving school iterations to make it the correct reflex...

Scary stuff! I learned the hard way many years ago on snow spinning myself into a guardrail just by letting off the gas when I started to spin, I didn't even brake...

Hope you get up and running again soon, though I'd be surprised if they have tie-rods sitting around in the parts dept...

Cheers!

juliem

You learn quite a bit about vehicle dynamics and maybe what happened wouldn't have been such a surprise... maybe

225TTR

Alex - glad you are okay - would not have been a fun ride down.

AkRascal

Short of going to a driving school, which is a great idea, find an empty, large parking lot some Sunday morning and try duplicating what you think you did, slower at first and then build up the speed a bit so you can feel and learn what the TT is going to do. Glad you didn't get hurt.

LighTTnin

I know... thanks Ellen...

LighTTnin

Thanks.... need to practice it... it was either that or bumping into another car and ending up worse

Larrytt

If you had ESP it would have hapened also. If you combined ESP and MkII it would have happened.

The reason you swapped ends was pretty simple. You most likely jerked the steering wheel in the opposite direction from the car in your path, this is a normal reaction. You also hit the brakes to avoiding hitting the car that darted in front of you, this is also a normal reaction. Their is nothing wrong with either reaction, the problem comes about when you combine these two normal reactions.

When you combine jerking a car to one side or another and then compounding that action with hitting the brakes you don't allow the car a chance to properly manage get itself sorted out. You want the car to perform two opposite maneuvers at one time.

By turning the wheel you asked the car to move either left or right. By hitting the brakes you asked the car to come to a stop. When you turn the wheel the weight of the car is shifted in the opposite direction of the turn. By hitting the brakes the weight of the car is transferred to the front of the car.

Here is an example of what happens if you turned the wheel to the right:

If you turn the wheel to the right the weight transfer to the left side of the car. When you hit the brakes at the same time all of the weight now transfers to the left front of the car. By doing this the back end of the car becomes light and loses traction. If you continue with the brakes and steering input the car will swap ends. It is purely physics at that point. The rear wheels can only provide so much traction and with the weight transferred to the front of the car no matter how much rubber you would have had in the back the car was going to swap ends.

This would have happened with any car you were in. 45 mph is a fast speed to toss the car about and hit the brakes like you described. That is why people are taught/trained at drivers schools to always brake in a straight line. The car is not capable of doing two things that are so opposite each other at one time.

I hope this helps in trying to explain what happened.

Lets hope the worst you did was break a tie-rod.

economisTT

time for drivers school at summit point -- i'd like to go too, if you get information on it.

hope your car's not in too bad shade. good luck!

OTOF

Glad you are okay. Hope LighTTnin is better soon.