A vivid reminder to make sure your car is mechanically up to snuff and also to upgrade your brakes

That car should have come from the factory with hydraulic brakes and a foot pedal e-brake.

It's amazing how many people want "moor horspowar y0!", and never discuss improvements to the brakes.

Javelin said:

CAinCA said:

jfryjfry said:

I was surprised they made no comment on the person/people in the car they hit. 
 

 

That's because they can't mention them because of the pending lawsuit. Honestly, this guy is doing the minivan driver's lawyer a huge favor.

Yeah if I was the minivan driver I would be using this with an attorney. The driver was an idiot and could potentially be criminally negligible. 

I have to believe that whatever lawsuit was/is involved in this crash are already settled. I can't imagine anyone would be so silly as to post this if a lawsuit was still pending or the other party didn't already have all of this footage.

racerfink said:

In a similar vein...  I kinda hesitate to post this and give this guy clicks,

No f'n HELMET? This could've been a Darwin Award.

1988RedT2 said:

Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) said:

I don't know Cleetus, nor do I follow his content, by my opinion is that you *are* what you give to the world. 
 

 

Wow.  I'm going to disagree (go figure).  Nobody on the internet is exactly what they appear to be.  Heck, the people we are at work rarely resemble who we are at home.  All of us are actors, writers of fiction, pretenders.  If this guy "Cleetus" wants to entertain by showing acts of stupidity, who are we to judge him?  The guy could be a Harvard PhD.  If we come to the internet looking for honesty, we've clearly been duped, and come to the wrong place.

 

Let me clarify: If you're showing bad examples to millions on Youtube, but a few hundred people see you being responsible and chill at LeMons races.... you're still a bad example to millions. 

I'll judge anybody and form an opinion. And well, opinions...

I've done some of those stupid/risky things at times, but not a whole bunch of them at once like that. I don't think I'd ever sit in a car without at least a 3pt belt in it - I definitely wouldn't only hook up the lap portion of a 3pt+ belt, especially not after hobiercr's accident. I've driven cars with no handbrakes, and once a car with a handbrake and engine braking but no hydraulic brakes - but driving a car with power well into the 4 digits and ordinary street car brakes that you're continuously dumping heat into to fight a sticky throttle is cuddling a ticking timebomb in your lap like a kitten.

A sticky throttle on an engine that powerful is a scary enough issue on its own...a light crack of the throttle could put down the kind of power Japanese sport compact owners have to mod their engines for.

SV reX said:

It's amazing how many people want "moor horspowar y0!", and never discuss improvements to the brakes.

Insufficient brakes were not the problem here, although deleting the cable-actuated pedal wasn't a smart move.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I didn't see any specs on the brakes. Are you saying the brakes that were on the car were sufficient to hold back a 1300 hp engine in a 3200 lb car?

 AND that they were in good working order?

In reply to Keith Tanner :

IMHO, deleting the cable operated e-brake IS insufficient brakes. 

Fueled by Caffeine said:

All modern/new vehicles are designed so that their brakes are many times more powerful than their engines.  I know this from some investigations I did with Cummins into a potential engine defect many years ago.   Lots of work with bus/truck and equipment manufacturers.   If you modify your vehicle to make more power and fail to maintain that same safety factor.  That's on you.   
 

you should be able to accelerate full throttle but then mash the brake pedal and still bring the vehicle to a stop. 

But that's a single stop with a braking system in good shape. What if you drag the brakes against that same engine trying to operate at 2000 rpm for 5-15 minutes? You'll overheat them, and then your brake specification is irrelevant. They can't hold back 1300 hp indefinitely. Pump enough heat into them, they'll fail. I can guarantee that if I go out to my truck, put one foot partway on the gas and then use the brake alone to control my speed, the factory engineered brakes will not survive.

Note that the "vintage" brakes they keep talking about were from 2005.

SV reX said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I didn't see any specs on the brakes. Are you saying the brakes that were on the car were sufficient to hold back a 1300 hp engine in a 3200 lb car?

 AND that they were in good working order?

There was a shot of them at the beginning. Generic Wilwood setup with a fairly hefty caliper. They were probably sufficient for a few stops from high speed and certainly should have held up to the little street joyride in the video.

But they were being asked to control speed against the stuck throttle which was making an estimated 900 lbs of torque (from a R&T article) for an extended period. I don't care how sexy your brake specification is, that's not in the design parameters for any brake system.

This is the problem with the video. The takeaway is not "those brakes weren't enough" but that's what people think they're learning because that's the spin being spun. No brakes would have been enough to be used as the primary speed control in that situation.

DirtyBird222 said:

... that tool Matt Farrah...

...Also to whoever was badmouthing Cletus. I've gotten the pleasure to be in a pit stall next to him a few times during Champcar races. He's a pretty chill person, you have to remember that some of these people find a niche to make a living and ride it and it's not always indicitive of who they are off camera. 

 

Does anyone else find this amusing?

There are way too many relevant issues here.  One is brakes; two would be the "need" for 1000 horsepower; three might be how good the thing looks, but still can't even be stopped.  Priorities and life lessons can be a real beotch when it comes to properly sequencing.  Many, if not most of us have been this stupid at least once . . .

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I'm not minimizing the obvious fact that the failure was riding the brakes.

I am saying that I also don't think he put sufficient engineering into an entire braking SYSTEM for a car of that power being operated on the streets (including an adequate e-brake).   My opinion is that the car was overbuilt and under engineered for the operating conditions, but that the clear failure point was operator error and a lack of understanding of the basics of how his braking system worked.

His was much more concerned with waving his dick around than building a well-sorted safe street driver.

edit: AND he did not have the skill to drive the car he built safely on the street.

Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) said:

Let me clarify: If you're showing bad examples to millions on Youtube, but a few hundred people see you being responsible and chill at LeMons races.... you're still a bad example to millions. 

I'll judge anybody and form an opinion. And well, opinions...

Can we not see videos showing acts of wanton stupidity for what they clearly are--entertainment?  We are exposed to countless examples of improper, dangerous, and stupid behavior every day and it's important that we be able to see such examples for what they are.

To paraphrase a famous saying by a famous someone whom I do not recall:  Some of us were meant to be examples for others to pattern their behavior upon.  Others are to be examples of what not to do.  We should not dispute the importance of either.

Fueled by Caffeine said:

All modern/new vehicles are designed so that their brakes are many times more powerful than their engines.  I know this from some investigations I did with Cummins into a potential engine defect many years ago.   Lots of work with bus/truck and equipment manufacturers.   If you modify your vehicle to make more power and fail to maintain that same safety factor.  That's on you.   
 

you should be able to accelerate full throttle but then mash the brake pedal and still bring the vehicle to a stop. 

During the Toyota debacle, a Certain Magazine did some testing and found that a Camry V6, at WOT, could brake 60-0 in a couple less feet than a Ford Taurus with the throttle released...

The brake setup on that car looks like a fairly typical lightweight drag setup that will stop the car from speed once. Heat management isn't nearly as much of a concern with the design. Nuking them while dragging them against a 1300hp big block sounds completely reasonable. Definitely better than stock drums though I would say.

There's a lot of reasons why I can't stand that type of build in this video. All bling, no substance, mostly unusable and questionably dangerous. Piloted by somebody who cares more about showing off than doing anything reasonable.

My takeaway: Some cars that look like trailer queens, should be trailer queens. 

1988RedT2 said:

Can we not see videos showing acts of wanton stupidity for what they clearly are--entertainment?  We are exposed to countless examples of improper, dangerous, and stupid behavior every day and it's important that we be able to see such examples for what they are.

To paraphrase a famous saying by a famous someone whom I do not recall:  Some of us were meant to be examples for others to pattern their behavior upon.  Others are to be examples of what not to do.  We should not dispute the importance of either.

This thread is heading exactly where I thought it would.

With failed brakes.. WWGRM do?

I've read sideswipe some cars. Find a curb. Turn the key. Other ideas?

Would a full on nascar checkered flag donut work?

My teeth hurt now.  
 

In reply to OHSCrifle :

If you could get it to do it, yes. But with drag racing skinnies on the front, you'd likely just go straight to Understeer Nationals

OHSCrifle said:

With failed brakes.. WWGRM do?

I've read sideswipe some cars. Find a curb. Turn the key. Other ideas?

Would a full on nascar checkered flag donut work?

Not drive a car that sticks at WOT?