Just wanted to share a recent experience. Almost crashed the car. It is a 98 HDJ 100, tires 9 year old BFG with enough thread left. Tank was near empty, all stock, no cargo and only myself driving.
Conditions: a lot of rain had occured in the past couple of hours. You had streams of water going through the road.
Road: road is twisiting with turns on a 15% descent. Pretty steep. Thankfully at that point the road is going from 1 lane each way to 2 lanes going up (allowing for slower vehicles going up). So plenty of space.
What happend:because of the relatively steep descent, i was lightly on the brakes throught that part of road to compensate for gravity. As I got into the last left hander, I felt the rear starting to come away from me. I tried some opposite lock but the pendulum effect was too strong. At that point I decided i should simply slam on the brakes and hope for the best. Car executed 150 degree oversteer. I ended up in the middle of the road (e.g fast lane going up) thankfully due to the very bad weather, traffic was light and I could swing myself around and get to destination without further drama.
My analysis:
Key factors to contribute to oversteer: very light rear, forward weight transfer due to braking making things worse. Probably less that optimal wet grip due to age of tires.
Had I been brave enough I should have released the brakes when applying opposite lock to get more weight on the back. The problem was the guardrail was somewhat near on my right and didn’t have that much margin. Given lack of oncoming traffic, oversteering was probably the least risky option.
Traction control would have helped. 98 don’t have it. I will get the tires changed in the winter. Still love my car and feel that we had an extra ‘adventure’ together. Have owned the car for 15 years+ now. Just wanted to share because the combination of factors do make the otherwise fantastic truck quite handful.
Conditions: a lot of rain had occured in the past couple of hours. You had streams of water going through the road.
Road: road is twisiting with turns on a 15% descent. Pretty steep. Thankfully at that point the road is going from 1 lane each way to 2 lanes going up (allowing for slower vehicles going up). So plenty of space.
What happend:because of the relatively steep descent, i was lightly on the brakes throught that part of road to compensate for gravity. As I got into the last left hander, I felt the rear starting to come away from me. I tried some opposite lock but the pendulum effect was too strong. At that point I decided i should simply slam on the brakes and hope for the best. Car executed 150 degree oversteer. I ended up in the middle of the road (e.g fast lane going up) thankfully due to the very bad weather, traffic was light and I could swing myself around and get to destination without further drama.
My analysis:
Key factors to contribute to oversteer: very light rear, forward weight transfer due to braking making things worse. Probably less that optimal wet grip due to age of tires.
Had I been brave enough I should have released the brakes when applying opposite lock to get more weight on the back. The problem was the guardrail was somewhat near on my right and didn’t have that much margin. Given lack of oncoming traffic, oversteering was probably the least risky option.
Traction control would have helped. 98 don’t have it. I will get the tires changed in the winter. Still love my car and feel that we had an extra ‘adventure’ together. Have owned the car for 15 years+ now. Just wanted to share because the combination of factors do make the otherwise fantastic truck quite handful.
