Thread: Tales of High Speed

Funny story from today. I mounted my street pit bike an took it for a spin down the street. I was flying along, enjoying myself when along came a stop sign. Sooo, I grabbed my brake and all I got was a clanking noise with absolutely no stopping happening. My speed was too high to just put my feet down, so I started slamming down the gears to stop it that way. In a temporary lapse of memory, I forgot these bikes don't have the typical 1 down, 3 up configuration- it's all up. So I slammed it all the way down, straight into neutral. I'm scared shitless because I have zero gear on and the street I'm coming up on typically has a little traffic. Thankfully I was able to lean it in and turn onto the street at high speed without incident.

Turns out one of my front caliper bolts had wiggled loose and fallen out.

What happened to the rear brake?

The guy at the shop thinks my master cylinder is out. If so, I won't be fixing it soon- he said it runs for $80! I'm going to be tinkering with it to see if I can figure out what's wrong for cheap.

140, just about top speed on my 07 mustang GT racing this bmw, it as the only time i have ever gone that fast, but damn did it get my adrenaline pumping. I was cruising a 75 when the beamer tried to past me, and since no one passes the stang, i kicked my clutch, down shifted to 3 and then brought it up to redline at 5th, the beamer tried to keep up but to no avail

I was gonna got to college near route 66, and i have heard that it is empty most of the time. I would have been nice to try my stang on that

Originally Posted by smokinstang65

That's when I noticed that they had a wide load going up the freeway at about 25 MPH and the cops had blocked all lanes of traffic northbound for it. Apparently nobody else knew about Route 66 so I immediately put the hammer down and shot up ahead of the roadblock and for the next hour and a half I saw no more than 2 cars at a time in the northbound lanes on the way to Vegas. It was insane.

was gonna go to college near route 66, i heard it is empty most of the time, so it would have been nice to try the stang out on it. But alas, it is gonna be vermont roads for me.

Originally Posted by Evan

was gonna go to college near route 66, i heard it is empty most of the time, so it would have been nice to try the stang out on it. But alas, it is gonna be vermont roads for me.

Old Route 66 is almost always deserted in the pass, and then when you drive I-40 out to Albuquerque, it shoots off from the interstate whenever the interstate hits mountains and those stretches are just as deserted. I will be making a trip up to Cimarron, NM this summer and thats a LONG drive along I-40 and I-25 and then the county roads out in NM are deserted because ... well nobody lives there. Lots of nice driving though.

I swear, sometimes I really wonder why I'm getting Physics and Mechanical Engineering Degrees when I love to drive so much. Almost think I might have been better suited to trucking. Oh well.

Also, along the lines of a caliper bolt coming out. Been there done that in my 65 Mustang. I was in a gated community once up in the foothills and for some reason some guy started following me. Started yelling, flashing his lights, kind of getting worrisome to me. He obviously had something to say which wasn't good and I wasn't about to stick around and find out. So, I tore off down this road and I'm approaching a turn to a road that leads to the exit. The problem is, this road intersects the road I am on at an angle. So normal 4 way stop involves turning 90 degrees. The turn I was about to make was something along the lines 120-130 degrees and the road was sloped upward with a wide depression for a gutter going through it. I approached this doing about 60 and downshifted to 2nd which broke both rear tires loose because of the engine braking torque, right as I started to turn and got on the brakes. Now mind you, I had none of this planned out, I was going to slow down take the turn a little fast and get out of there. What happened was something out of a ralleye and a movie combined. This combination brought me into the most beautiful drift. The ass end started to com around and about halfway through the corner my car was already facing the proper direction to drive straight on the next road and I gassed it, counter steered to keep that angle and I slid until I was about in the middle of the road where the tires hooked up and I shot off. I hauled up this hill and around a slight turn in an undeveloped portion of the community, hit 110, I see the exit gate approaching and hit the breaks. I feel a wierd vibration in the pedals, I've got an odd noise, and I am NOT slowing down like I should. I'm getting on the brakes harder and harder and I finally come to a stop at the gate with about 2 feet to spare. Gate opens, I drive home.

I get home and I start inspecting my brakes. So when I executed that most beautiful of drifts, I was sliding through a depression/gutter. It was a rather rough ride and the car bottomed out. Well, when it did that I somehow sheared off one of the two bolts that holds the caliper on my drivers front brakes. So when I hit the brakes, the caliper on that brake disc would rock up and off the disc and was rubbing the inside of my tires rim. This is where I got the wierd vibration and noise from.

I've also had the "pleasure" of having an A-arm bolt shear off on me while driving which made for an interesting drive home. I COMPLETELY grenaded the clutch in that 2001 Saleen once driving to a car show. When I dropped the bell housing powder was all that was left and the thin metal plates they attach the clutch material to. I've chunked fan blades multiple times and had a water pump shaft break that put my fan RIGHT through my radiator. Ohhhh, when I first had the 65 it had dual points for ignition and one of the points went out and it backfired so bad that it burst the seams on both of my mufflers and caught my air filter on fire. i think thats about it for mechanical failures that I've experienced. I picked up a Muncie M-21 from my grandad once and me and my dad took it to our friends transmission shop and pulled the cover and all the teeth were stripped from first gear. i knew it was out of his vette from when he got back from Vietnam so I asked him what happened and he said he couldnt remember (I was still in HS so he didnt want to hint at his previous racing). My friend walks over and asks what it was out of, takes a look at it and says, "Wow, looks like someone was running a modified big block and tried to side-step the clutch one time too many" at which point my dad's response was, "Ahhhh its coming back to me now"

Oh well, I've made this post much too long. Though I guess with it I shall ask the following question.

What have you broken in your car(or bike for that matter) while just driving, or trying to make something do what it doesn't want to do (like the tranny)

170 indicated on a CBR600 (probably more like 155 true speed). Nothing quite like going that fast on a sportbike, its an amazing feeling.

I've slowed down since I had an ~135mph full lock tank slapper on the 405 ~4-5 years ago...you don't need to tell me how stupid that was, I learned my lesson. I'm pretty mellow on the streets these days, and prefer tight twisties that keep me leaned over and under 50 or 60 mph. You can have a lot of fun on a bike without going super fast.

135 or so on a Ducati Monster. I will never ever get anything other than a Ducati after owning one. Everything about them is sexy. Eventhe maintanence schedule. LOL

The 1098 is quite the machine but a little out of my price range so its gonna be thet749 next.

I am also currently waiting for my new business to start making some money then its the Maserati Gran Turismo S! WOO HOO That is sick.

125+ in '90 Nissan Maxima (speedo only went up to 125 but I had gone past that) and 125 was smoooooooth in the Maxima - just cruising speed- multiple times, perimeter of Atlanta, Georgia, or on GA-400...

125+ in '93 Honda Prelude VTEC (ditto above) but I was WAY above 125, wasn't as smooth as the Maxima, screaming and shaking.... only a couple times, West Texas interstate (barren nothingness for miles), and on the way back home from Atlanta, Georgia... and the less said here, the better...