Found a tiny, twisty road last week that really made the Mx5 come alive… Long stretches with clear open views and fields for potential run off.

I was on my way to buy some boots, got to the shop and realised I’d forgotten my wallet. I ended up going back and forth along one stretch about five times.

Went back today (with my wallet) and hit one section with a slight rise and could feel the engine rev and the wheels quietsch on landing. Was all good, but did make me wonder how much of that a car can take…

1.6 nb. Already set up with sport springs and some brace thingy across the engine and the rear axles.

Remember a school friend who was jumping his Sierra “lookalike” Cosworth on a humpback bridge south of Basildon, but he was getting serious air and the car taking a big hit on the landing. It died in a lakeside multi-storey carpark.

I was on my way to buy some boots, got to the shop and realised I’d forgotten my wallet. I ended up going back and forth along one stretch about five times.

You forgot your wallet 4 times ?

 did make me wonder how much of that a car can take…

It’s when the bottom of the car starts making contact with the road you start doing the damage 😉

There’s a good hump back bridge near me that I’ve taken a bit too fast on a couple of occasions and smashed the sump on my old Astra Gte 16v and flattened the exhaust on my Sunny Gti-r.

No scraping…. Although I have scraped the bottom when pulling into an underground carparks, onto garage forecourts and gravelly lay-bys (plural of lay-by?).

I think we have about 5 minutes before getting ripped a new arse for irresponsible driving. Let’s enjoy it.

I like it when you can see the scrapes in the tarmac from the landings 😆 Never had my current car scrape out but my focus used to hit the ground like a dropped brick, even just going light over a summit could feel pretty dramatic. I had an aftermarket belly pan on the motorbike and it suffered a bit… Few roads I know, you’ve got big open sightlines, avoiding the blind summit problem- approach to the Duke’s Pass frinstance before it gets waggly.

Yep a school friend of mine was killed doing that. His mate, who’d been driving, got a ban.

Surfmat has a contender.

You don’t drive a company van do you.

(plural of lay-by?).

The word you are looking for is laybia

Sweepy, very good!

Hebdencyclist – that wasn’t around delamere forest was it by any chance?

The week I passed my driving test I did that in my dad’s Saab 9000. Blew the front shocks, cracked the front wheels, broke the engine mounts, triggered the seatbelt pre-tensioners and bent the sub-frame. When we got out, the doors wouldn’t close again… Man, I was chewed out for that one! It took a couple of months, but the insurance fixed the car instead of writing it off. A friend saw the whole thing and said I got four feet. What a dumbass… Just lucky I never hurt anyone! 😳

A friend saw the whole thing and said I got four feet

Where they all on the accelerator?

Mates wife was hospitalised and critically ill for a long time after someone went head on into her over a humpback bridge near Ruithin.

Maybe get a spotter? Can get some photos of your awesomz for teh Instagrams that way too…

I’m not too sure what you mean “jumped”? Did you jump your car on your bike? Or take off in your your car whilst driving?

A company I used to work for years ago had a pickup truck that was all of the awsumz for jumping the local humpback bridges in…

I think we have about 5 minutes before getting ripped a new arse for irresponsible driving. Let’s enjoy it.

8 hours and it hasn’t happened yet 😯

I suppose it was quite late, their mummys would have had them tucked up in bed. Give it another hour or so 😆

My Alfa 156 used to bottom out the front undertray on compressions fairly regularly.

Apparently the v6 had a metal one so it didn’t wear out as quickly. Plus you got sparks.

*swoons*

When I was 17 and used to drive like a complete knob I got air in my mini running a level crossing as the gates were coming down. I also got a scratch along the roof from the edge of the gate.

Jutland Street in Manchester.

Used to drive the 25 minutes there in our teens in my XR3i just to do the jump. Needed a spotter though. It was that steep you only needed to hit it at 20mph.

[video]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vLbM0AZ2HRg&autoplay=1[/video]

My mate managed to break the engine mounts and flatten the exhaust on his dad’s Mk2 Astra.

It doesn’t take much to damage the oil sump which can cause problems with oil pump and then you have a seized engine.
Chassis damage is all too easy too. Cross struts may stiffen the body up but the energy from the landing still has to be absorbed somewhere.
Getting air in cars can be fun until something breaks, always better in someone else’s motor.

My AX GTi was ideal, I think because it weighed about the same as an empty crisp packet it would gently float back down to earth.

There is a great bit on the Barrow Road near Bristol.
I have had the wheels of my old ford Ranger off the ground there.

Lucky someone cought it on camera… 😆

I thought this thread was going to be about a flat battery and jump leads.
Ah well

I used to get air fairly regularly in my first car (Austin Maxi HLS, 1750cc, 95bhp no less!) over the river Greet heading north out of Southwell, Notts. The car was a big soft squidgy thing and landed smoothly. It was also built like a tank and virtually impossible to damage it seemed.
I’ve not done it for years and years now but I did get a decent wheelie out of our Ducati with Mrs PP on the back over Balaugh Bridge on the TT course in 2012. But that’s pretty much necessary and expected over there. 🙂

Flattened the sump on my Caterham 7.
Lost the spare wheel out of the carrier on my Citroen BX.

The BX one was particularly (un)impressive as it had about 20 feet of hydropneumatic suspension travel before the wheels would actually leave the deck. Landing was pretty cushy too.

In many ways they would be the ideal gangster/cop cars in American movie road chase scenes.
edit – Citroen BX vs. Austin Maxi, yeah, I can just picture it in my minds eye.

[video]https://youtube.com/watch?v=retlX1GG37s[/video]

Many, many years ago when I was young, indestructible and (more) foolish, I was following a little black Citroen AX mincing along a road with a ‘known’ hump in it. I was in a 1.6L Mk3 Escort, basically a detuned XR3.

It was quiet, so I stopped to let the AX dribble off into the distance. Several weeks later when it was finally out of sight I went “right then” and trod on the loud pedal.

I hit the hump fast enough to get all four wheels off the ground. My elation quickly disintegrated as I cleared the crest to find the AX still on the exit of the hump, as it was making a left turn at 0.01mph. I hit the brakes, nothing happened as they sadly weren’t air brakes. I swung the wheel, but found one of the fundamental design flaws of the Mk3 Escort is that in order to change direction the front wheels need to be in contact with something that isn’t 80% nitrogen.

I hit the ground a few feet behind the AX, practically on full lock. The car dove to the right, missing the AX by not much, and the front wheels bounced into the air a second time. I threw the steering wheel left and as the wheels connected again the car swerved around the rolling roadblock back onto the correct side of the road. As I ground to a halt to recover from my near-death experience, I saw the AX in my mirror pootling off down the side street, blissfully unaware.

^
10/10 for both the poetic description and the youthful stupidity.
20/10. You win the internet for today.

Cougar wins, my sofa has new coffee stains

Was this you ?
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOjnulKIRvk[/video]

[video]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KpeA-UwdZpE[/video]

Cougar at 6.05.

When working on a mango farm in Australia, I got promoted to crate collection because I was big and strong (It was a promotion, as picking the mangos can be hazardous, as if the stalk snaps too close to the fruit, they spray out a caustic sap that can cause burns, blindness and a persistent rash… somehow I got mango rash on my nutsack).

This meant we’d go around after the pickers had finished, collecting all the picked fruit and putting empty crates in place ready for the next day. The vehicle we used for this was a beat up and battered old Nissan Cabstar, which already had the windscreen missing.

On the drive out, with the back filled with empty crates, me and Bruce, my workmate, would take turns seeing how rowdy we could get without losing any crates… due to the interlocking crates, and the caged sides of the truck, you could generally get away with a fair bit of drifting and bumping about without any issue.

I decided to step up my game and gave it full gas towards a big old hump in the dirt road; managed to get about 2ft of air and though the landing was not the most cushioned, there was no damage… however, when the dust cleared, there was a helluva lot of crates to pick up.

We also had a stab at jousting with the cherry pickers, but it’s pretty scary farting about when you’re 15ft in the air on a glorified lawnmower.

Couple of roads round here where its really easy to extend the suspension on.
Selby to Snaith main road, the bridge into Snaith is mental. Not sure if its been altered now, but you had to go over it really slow. Road between Ulleskelf and the turning to Tadcaster has a bump in it that you have to be careful about.

Air in a NB MX-5…?

Unless yours is the only NB that doesn’t have (hidden) terminal rust in the front chassis legs, I predict your car may soon separate into a couple of pieces….

What I find utterly laughable about this place is here we have a thread about driving recklessly on the road and so hard and fast on a public road that you stand a high probability of having or causing an accident that could be fatal.

And in the bike forum theres a thread about the injustices of not handing out life time driving bans and custodial sentences for careles driving.

A lot of what some of those in this thread have described as their driving would sit comfortably within a charge of dangerous driving.

Save the heroics for the track if you drive that well.

By all means make progress but don’t reinforce the message it’s ok to drive like idiots. The public highway is no place for testing the limits of your car’s grip and on limit handling.

What I find utterly laughable about this place is here we have a thread about driving recklessly on the road and so hard and fast on a public road that you stand a high probability of having or causing an accident that could be fatal.

And in the bike forum theres a thread about the injustices of not handing out life time driving bans and custodial sentences for careles driving.

A lot of what some of those in this thread have described as their driving would sit comfortably within a charge of dangerous driving.

Save the heroics for the track if you drive that well.

By all means make progress but don’t reinforce the message it’s ok to drive like idiots. The public highway is no place for testing the limits of your car’s grip and on limit handling.

13 hours, is that some sort of record?

We’ve grown as a forum.

I’m not advocating that it’s ok to drive like an idiot, merely passing on an amusing anecdote about when I once did something idiotic in my early 20s.

Hands up anyone who hasn’t done something idiotic in their 20s? You’re either lying or have my pity.