cars of the seventies

braking through bends is madness,forces of gravity will send you off the road in a tonne of metal,if you brake before the bend then boot it on the apex more safer and good fun. :)
 
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empip said:
A BMW Cooper or the real thing? :D
One of these, the last 500 ever to be made in 2001 end of production. Red colour shown in the picture, mine is in Anthracte/Silver colour :D
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A real head turner or is it me they're looking at :LOL:
 
Arggh.. Not the wooden dashboard one??
This'll give it a little oomph!
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Less than £2k fitted by the experts.

We used to run two big spots level with headlamps centres mounted from the bonnet catch cross member.
Some used a cut in half jubilee clip rivetted to bonnet and upper spot case.. the clip helped steady the lamp as a brace and the screw allowed adjustment up and down... Good old bad old daze .. Still got me 1970 pucca BL looseleaf Workshop manual... a real one !!
:D :D
 
ohmygodwhathaveyoudone said:
braking through bends is madness,forces of gravity will send you off the road in a tonne of metal,if you brake before the bend then boot it on the apex more safer and good fun. :)

Braking through bends is inadvisable, but only heavy braking is particularly mad.

When you are accelerating, your tyres are applying a force in order to push the car forwards. When braking, your tyres are applying a force in order to push the car backwards. When cornering, your tyres are applying a force to accelerate the car sideways.

Just so long as you remember not to exceed the total amount of force the tyres can exert against the road, you should be OK :D

As to braking before corners and then booting onto the apex, I agree! Hit the grip limit under power (that point just before understeer becomes rather silly ;) ), then lift off sharply. The front wheels suddenly find a lot more grip and turns in sharply, at the same time the back-end wants to overtake.

Even so, some people don't believe you can oversteer in a front-wheel-drive car :LOL:

All very silly on the public highway, but I used to be able to get a Fiat Uno sideways on pretty much any corner you could point at. :D
 
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Ah but, we are usually not in uniform race track conditions, road surface can be anything from grippy to slippy in a matter of metres ...
ABS teaches you that, much more subtly than a mo-bike or a pokey understeering mini .. I do not mean 'full on, ABS taking over' just the tickle one feels from it from time to time whilst using normal braking techniques... reminding one of the 'invisible' vagaries in the road surface.
If the ABS is tickling in and out under straight line braking approaching a bend .. it would be a foolish man not to proceed with caution .. There is plenty to learn from the system in action.
;)
 
Ah, that makes sense. I thought you had meant full-on pulsating pedal! :LOL:

Ever noticed how the feeder-roads onto some roundabouts have been polished by cars stopping and starting? I know a couple that present something of a challenge in wet weather: people can (and do) still drive around them quite quickly, which means when you are entering one from a standstill it necessitates putting one's foot down. But, even with the clutch not fully out, and with the throttle nowhere near the carpet, still getting wheelspin.

In my experience, when faced with fairly minor wheelspin the best thing to do is just ride it out, albeit whilst reducing the throttle pressure slightly: dumping the accelerator to let the wheels regain grip causes rapid decelleration and doesn't remove you from the path of whatever you had to pull out quickly for!

This is why I find the majority of traction-control systems don't fill me with much confidence: I'm in a sticky situation, the last thing I want is for the engine to LOSE power!

The worst one I found was on a Mk4 Vauxhall Astra SRi I drove. It literally killed engine power until the wheels retained grip, which made it suddenly feel like you had changed up to 5th gear at 10mph. You couldn't even keep it switched off, as soon as it detected more than a modicum of tyre chirp it would switch itself back on!!! Best one so far was on a Fiat Stilo: seemed to modulate the engine power to keep the wheels right on the limit of traction without breaking grip.
 
Sometimes there is a brutish non-mech' sympathetic answer ... mangles parts etc ...
But, front wheel drive left foot braking with power on helps the rally style cornering, slows the fronts slides the rears ...
For take off .. maintaining rpm, use clutch to adjust power infeed..
Neither of which I would personally use...

The best car killer is hard acceleration, holding revs to red line or even close to, Been there, done it and replaced the cracked and sometimes broken bits..
Get everything rolling, then squeeze it on, max 500 below redline.
;)
 
traction control + fwd = going nowhere.even on a slightly damp road pulling away from traffic lights it just kicks in as soon as the turbo comes on song,mind you 308 bhp through the front wheels is a laugh but changing tyres every 6000 miles isnt.
 
Omy, your clock of destiny is ticking ... 308 bhp just speeds it up a fair bit........ .... ... .. . 'til the point where you may 'disappear in a puff of oily black smoke' Now that was from an old Commodore computer text based game 83-84 I am sure....:cool:
 
I had one of these in the same colour as the picture. 1978 Opel Kadett Coupe.

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I wanted a Mini, but then saw this and had to have it. Most people thought it was a Manta or something sporty :LOL: With a 1196cc "lump" this was not the case ! I replaced the old air box with a K&N open filter and it sounded wicked, and went a bit quicker too.

Tough as old boots and it got me to and from Uni for three years. It was RWD and because it had little power, I was able to throw it around and get the odd tail-happy moment in utter safety. :D I was very sad to sell it when I got a 205GTi. :(
 
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