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After 21 years of sensible motoring I managed my first ever handbrake turn today. As usual I was turning the car round in the empty yard behind the wifes house this morning and as there was a bit of snow on the ground I decided to try it. Car went round beautifully, almost the full 180 degrees. I couldn't stop giggling for ages. Anybody else had any similar 'firsts' recently?
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Congratulations! 21 years is quite an achievement. Glad you enjoyed it.
The electric parking brake on our Scenic is one of the things I don't like as you aren't able to do handbrake turns with it. :-(
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The wife's house? Where do you live?
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I've only once managed a perfect handbrake turn, in a 2007 BMW 325d SE.
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When I had my 3 Series I used to regularly do a doughnut using full throttle without the traction control in the yard behind my house whenever it was snowy, far easier than doing a 3 point turn!
Wouldn't dare do it in the dry, I'd leave manky great skid marks on the block paving!
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this thread has been on here for over 17 hours....and there's been no comment about how dangerous that sort of driving is, how you could easily skid into a house, knocking it down and killing all the children stood at the bus stop out the front?...:-)
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PMSL..... they're probably all stuck behind two trucks overtaking on the A14! :-)
Edited by Pugugly {P} on 03/02/2008 at 16:11
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Did it once or twice when we lived in an area that got a decent amount of snow. Always in a deserted carpark, and simply to amuse my pre-adolescent son.
Watched another guy do it once, clip a kerb with a back wheel, and snap his half-shaft at the hub. Back wheel neatly folded under car! Cool,....clever,... NOT
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On a deserted, snowy Tesco car park I used to practice handbraking the tail out and left foot braking to keep slides under control (in the wife's Punto, of course). Made me feel like Eric Carlsson, even if I was only doing 20mph ...
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Its good practice for the real world of snow driving. One thing I really don't miss with BMWs were their ability to show me up in snow !
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A Tesco car park is not a private place and it falls under the road traffic act. Beware. Regards Peter
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I posted about this recently how I used to do it regularly in a 1979 Peugeot 505 saloon twenty odd years ago in Ashton-Under-Lyne but couldn't manage one on a damp road in my current 406.
However I've done a few recently in the snow in the turn-around area at the end of our cul-de-sac. The last time though, someone had parked there which put me off, I did a half-committed turn, bottled it, stamped on the foot brake and walloped it against a curb.
I'm not the only one, I've seen my neighbours do it and my wife's brothers do it when they visit. I think its an essential practise.
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The wife and I live apart, due to her taste for other men. Divorce is (finally) iminent after period of separation. It will be a day of celebration when the absolute comes through!
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pity it wasn't a 180 degree power slide on 6-inch deep gravel ;-)
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I did a drive and survive course a few years back -
I was using a course provided Ford Probe on an old airfield at Boreham in Essex ( home of Cosworth and the Essex police helicopter) and amongst other skills was taught how to survive an ambush by spotting the trouble , reversing at speed , doing a handbrake turn and speeding away from danger the way I had come....
Great fun when you dont have to worry about hitting anything else and I found it surprisingly easy to control .
Trouble is no- one has ambushed me since......
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Helicopter - I reckon you must have failed the course as you don't touch the handbrake when doing a reverse 'J' turn...
consider this your first ambush :)
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Not quite an ambush Norm - I got it slightly the wrong way round -
This is what I was taught .... not by Tiff though.
tinyurl.com/3dy74f
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There's no way I'm saying I know better than Tiff - however he does mention in that clip that he hits the brakes to lock up the front wheels; is this because he's in a front wheel drive car? There's certainly no need in a rear wheel drive.
Does remind me of a funny story tho - a ex-colleague thought he'd show off doing a reverse j turn in a Knutsford car park only there was a drainage channel down the middle - doesn't half mess up your paint work when the car rolls over...
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Norm - Theres no way I'm going to argue with Tiff either.... i think he's done enough to prove that he knows what hes doing. It may be because its a front wheel drive.
It was great fun on that course, not just doing these sort of turns ,but also a bit of off roading where I was putting a Maverick through its paces in an old quarry , mudplugging and literally going up and down the sort of slopes where you were suspended at some very steep angles indeed.
The only downer was when SWMBO beat me in a Go Kart race - she was behind me all the way and then took me on the last corner in a do or die manoevre which left me with a very severely bruised elbow where she crashed into me and spun me off the track.... laughing hysterically.....
Determined lady is my missis...or should I say demented ;0)
I've never lived it down .
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When I visited Northern Sweden a couple of years ago in the winter, Every other driver seemed to do handbrake turns to get around an outdoor car park.
they seem to have perfected it to a fine art. (although they all had studded tyres!).
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>>A Tesco car park is not a private place and it falls under the road traffic act.
Just as a matter of interest, what section of the RTA would be infringed?
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When I started to learn to drive at university in Manchester my first lesson ended up with me in the car park of Maine Road (old Man City ground was there then).
The instructor (BSM) asked why not to apply hand break whilst moving and turning the wheel. Well he wanted to do a few hand break turns and did.... and then wanted me to do them as well!!! I didn't but maybe I should have ;-)
He was a little crazy but a good instructor.... never did reverse around that corner in Whalley Range (where the test centre was located) on one lesson when there was a "lady of the night" on said corner. He was disappointed. And it was daylight too.... I was surprised at lunchtime these things happened!
Would have been a first to reverese round a corner when the driving instructor was chatting to a "lady of the night" I guess (you can see avoiding any swear filter).
Edited by rtj70 on 05/02/2008 at 17:38
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Congratulations.
My first handbrake turn was in Hamsterley Forest in a Skoda.
Ca 1980.
Never to be forgotten.
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Do any backroomers have experience of handbrake turning in a car whose handbrake operates on the front wheels? (i.e. a J-turn with "attitude"!) Many years ago I was in a friend's Alfasud when he tried a handbrake turn in a supermarket car park. If only we'd been going backwards instead of forwards...
And what about attempting it with a foot-operated parking brake? Can it be done?
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Mum & Dad used to belong to a motor club that did lots of tearing around on grassy fields so I've known how to handbrake turn for ages. I remember the satisfied tingle I got when I did my first J-turn in an ancient Vauxhall Victor. The secret was to keep hold of the column gear lever because the combination of abrupt direction change and shiny bench seat made for a lot of fruitless arm-waving, barked knuckles and unintentional horn blowing. This exciting manoeuvre also used to be called a "brodie" IIRC.
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