Runaway BMW??

i smell bullshit. my mates 318 man topped out at 138mph. and if your driving down hard shoulder doing that sort off speed and being lucky enough not to have anything els on the hard shoulder you would turn the car off off or some thing not wait for the road to run out. what a PENIS.

The message from Duncanwood contains these words:

Dunno about you, but on the flat or uphill my car stops on its own.

Knowing absolutely nothing about automatics, what would happen to an automatic vehicle (allegedly stuck in gear) with a sudden loss of engine power, would it behave in the same way as a car with a manual gearbox i.e. the resistance of the engine having a slowing-down effect?

"AstraVanMan" > Aye - it's not that bloody difficult either - especially not at that sort of

Ah but the insurance pays for a crashed car but not a mechanical failure like a granaded 'box.

Also, the

If you have ever driven an auto and taken notice you would know that there remains some engine braking down to quite low speeds which keeps the engine spinning well above idle down to maybe 30mph or less.

Huw

BMW with either ZF or GM gearbox is not *some* and every auto I have driven [very many] have no facility to prevent the box shifting from any Drive position [through 2to3 to perhaps 4 and D] to Neutral. Same goes for manually shifting from Reverse to Neutral. From Neutral to Drive or Reverse is different and may have a button press and a brake pedal interlock to negotiate.

Huw

"Ivan" wrote >>

Yes but slightly less and less still at very low speeds where the car could be stopped even with burnt out brakes. The only defective seriously component here is likely to be the nut behind the wheel who should by rights have been extinguished before he could breed. That is standard Darwinism. We are messing about with human evolution in the West at present with consequences that might lead to the loonies taking over the asylum as they breed faster and are constantly humoured.

Huw

"paul" > It's exactly the same as a lorry driver tried a few years before and was

I hope he got put away in a padded cell and fitted with a straight jacket for a very long time.

Huw

No.

Nine points on his licence and realised he'd just overtaken a plod at

definitely not. I drove a Scorpio with failed power steering around for a couple of months years back when I was skint :-) It was heavy, but I've driven cars with no PAS that had heavier steering!

And a bleeding obvious one I would have thought :-) My second one would be to make sure it's reasonably clear, hold the wheel tight and hit the brakes...

Os

Especially at 120mph.

...in so much that it won't bring you to a complete stop.

What do you expect, the guy is from the Portsmouth area? :o)

There is an old joke that sums Portsmouth up, if you find a female in Portsmouth with more than six teeth in her head, she's a tourist.

PDH

Yes, the story sounds fishy. Lack of power steering is not a big deal for the average male, but OK it was probably not a good idea to switch off the ignition as it could enter the steering lock. So why didn't he just depress the clutch? Surely it wouldn't over-rev as this sort of thing is computer controlled nowadays. Also how do you survive a 135mph roll in a family salon with no rallye equipment? You don't. Maybe he was just doing 100 mph or so and lost control.

Which ones?

From what I can gather it's generally Tiptronic-style ones and it definitely applies to 'semi-auto' boxes.

But it had a standard cable.

It happened to me once on a 4.2 E-Type belonging to a chap who was terrified of it and drove it very gently. I'd changed the clutch and serviced it so took it for an extended road test.;-) Reaching the first derestricted dual carriageway from here I gave it some wally in second gear and the pedal stuck down. Simply turned off the ignition - and it did have an (aftermarket) steering lock. The throttle linkage was rods and bell cranks and one had gone over centre. Probably been like that from new. Just needed proper setting up as the rods were adjustable.

You haven't read all the previous posts in this thread have you?

Steve

From my reading of it he used the brakes to keep the speed down but not to stop the car. In those circumstances they would soon burn out.