Discussion
How many others have managed to get their car off the road?
I was blatting around the roads from Belvoir Castle to Eastwell having a wonderful time on Saturday (it's off the A52 Grantham-Nottingham road) when the car took off on a rather interesting set of shallow bumps in the road!
The first two bumps were rather benign and the Noble dealt with them perfectly - but upon hitting the third (which looked exactly the same as the first two) the car took off for a good 5-10 feet - totally unexpected.
I was a bit shocked at the whole event - and my passenger looked a bit disturbed by it as well.
What's strange to me was that I could only have been doing perhaps 5-10 or so mph over the speed limit when I hit them - makes you wonder who designs a road where you can take off at or around the limit for the road??!!!???
J (brown pants...)
I was blatting around the roads from Belvoir Castle to Eastwell having a wonderful time on Saturday (it's off the A52 Grantham-Nottingham road) when the car took off on a rather interesting set of shallow bumps in the road!
The first two bumps were rather benign and the Noble dealt with them perfectly - but upon hitting the third (which looked exactly the same as the first two) the car took off for a good 5-10 feet - totally unexpected. I was a bit shocked at the whole event - and my passenger looked a bit disturbed by it as well.
What's strange to me was that I could only have been doing perhaps 5-10 or so mph over the speed limit when I hit them - makes you wonder who designs a road where you can take off at or around the limit for the road??!!!???
J (brown pants...)
I got an Escort van air bourne over a hump back bridge many years ago ...... scared the living be'jesus' out of me. I was munching away on a sarnie at the time! It used to be the A426 from Southam to Rugby, don't know what its called now, all the road numbers have changed.
The van coped quite well actually, still I was only carrying a jiffy bag. Good job it wasn't a couple of hundred weight of sand or some such.
The van coped quite well actually, still I was only carrying a jiffy bag. Good job it wasn't a couple of hundred weight of sand or some such.
Very, very scary moment!!! I had to act cool when my girfriend said. "what the hell happened there?" But my heart was beating like crazy!
Oh, I can top that experience.
A fair while back when my friends and I were just rookie drivers one of my mates who had just passed his test about 2 weeks back was driving his Dads car.
There was a convoy of 3 cars just out for a drive, I cna't remember exactly where we were trying to go but somehow we ended up on some (tarmaced) farmroads.
Driving along we hit a large humped section in the road. The car left the ground and must've been at least a couple of feet off the ground. Was quite amusing and no harm done. My mate says "better remember thats there so we don't take off on the way back" Que famous last words......
On the way back he duly forgets about the hump. Unfortunatley this time we're doing about 60mph. The first time we hit it we were only going at about 35.
Talk about BIG air. It was like your own WRC rally experience.
My mates in the car behind said it looked very impressive in a kind of dukes of Hazzard kind of way.
Upon landing there was a massive BANG. The seatbelt pretensioners went off and pinned us to the seats.
Then smoke started to pour in the airvents.
We quickly stopped and jumped out expecting to see the engine on fire.
Upon not seeing any fine my mate decides to open the bonnet just to be sure. Not really a good idea so I stood welllll back.
Turned out there was no fire.
So we jumped back in the car and continued to drive along. Before long we started hearing funny noises.
My friend who had thought he'd gotten away without any major damage was sunk.
When it was ut into the garage the final list of damage was thus:
Bent chassis
flat spots on front wheels
engine hanging on by ONE mount (the rest were broken, its a wonder it ran after the jump)
exhausts bent
suspension wrecked
body panels bent
seat belts needed new cartridges (for pre tensioners)
Loads of other small stuff.
Even after a full recondition the car has never been quite right.
Oh, and the damamge ran well into 3 figures
The car was a Saab.
Ever since then I've had a lot of respect for the stuff that the rally cars can get away with.
Oh, and it taught me NEVER to jump my own cars. Even a small jump can cause major damage. I was surprised at the amount of damage even (what I thought was) a small jump can do.
To this day we still take the piss out of my mate.
Having said that they rip the piss out me now. But I'll keep quiet as to why. (although it could have something to do with bollards)
Andy
A fair while back when my friends and I were just rookie drivers one of my mates who had just passed his test about 2 weeks back was driving his Dads car.
There was a convoy of 3 cars just out for a drive, I cna't remember exactly where we were trying to go but somehow we ended up on some (tarmaced) farmroads.
Driving along we hit a large humped section in the road. The car left the ground and must've been at least a couple of feet off the ground. Was quite amusing and no harm done. My mate says "better remember thats there so we don't take off on the way back" Que famous last words......
On the way back he duly forgets about the hump. Unfortunatley this time we're doing about 60mph. The first time we hit it we were only going at about 35.
Talk about BIG air. It was like your own WRC rally experience.
My mates in the car behind said it looked very impressive in a kind of dukes of Hazzard kind of way.
Upon landing there was a massive BANG. The seatbelt pretensioners went off and pinned us to the seats.
Then smoke started to pour in the airvents.
We quickly stopped and jumped out expecting to see the engine on fire.
Upon not seeing any fine my mate decides to open the bonnet just to be sure. Not really a good idea so I stood welllll back.
Turned out there was no fire.
So we jumped back in the car and continued to drive along. Before long we started hearing funny noises.
My friend who had thought he'd gotten away without any major damage was sunk.
When it was ut into the garage the final list of damage was thus:
Bent chassis
flat spots on front wheels
engine hanging on by ONE mount (the rest were broken, its a wonder it ran after the jump)
exhausts bent
suspension wrecked
body panels bent
seat belts needed new cartridges (for pre tensioners)
Loads of other small stuff.
Even after a full recondition the car has never been quite right.
Oh, and the damamge ran well into 3 figures
The car was a Saab.
Ever since then I've had a lot of respect for the stuff that the rally cars can get away with.
Oh, and it taught me NEVER to jump my own cars. Even a small jump can cause major damage. I was surprised at the amount of damage even (what I thought was) a small jump can do.
To this day we still take the piss out of my mate.
Having said that they rip the piss out me now. But I'll keep quiet as to why. (although it could have something to do with bollards)
Andy
ohhhh hang on, you didn't mean 5-10 feet vertically did you... 
Managed to jump my old fiesta, hit my head on the roof. Probably something to do with the gearbox mounts breaking, and it only being held on by the engine.
Jumped my Laguna, landed, smacked the bumper on the floor and knocked the headlighs out of alignment. they're now pointing nowhere near the right way.
Jumped my Laguna, landed, smacked the bumper on the floor and knocked the headlighs out of alignment. they're now pointing nowhere near the right way.
Moderator! Moderator!
The integrale loves to get airborne. It is so well composed that you can take off, land and just carry on accelerating. In a rally type car it is a nice feeling to get air, which one were you in? Not sure I'd fancy it in a Noble. Although I think Deristrictor doesn't mind getting his beastly beetle airborne IIRC 
Erm...well.
- In my mate Speedys brown sierra estate when we took off over a hump brigde and landed in a farmers field and had to get a tow out.
- In Speedys blue saloon nova, took off on the bridge at Poulton, landed, lost control and went through the hedge into someones garden, wheelspan to get out and legged it before they could come and get us.
- Brewleys mums' black convertable XR3I...beacon fell, took off over the edge (don't know how) and landed vertically against a tree. The AA man was quite impressed I think...his mum wasnt.
(Image kindly supplied by a hysterical Roop).
Claire
- In my mate Speedys brown sierra estate when we took off over a hump brigde and landed in a farmers field and had to get a tow out.
- In Speedys blue saloon nova, took off on the bridge at Poulton, landed, lost control and went through the hedge into someones garden, wheelspan to get out and legged it before they could come and get us.
- Brewleys mums' black convertable XR3I...beacon fell, took off over the edge (don't know how) and landed vertically against a tree. The AA man was quite impressed I think...his mum wasnt.
(Image kindly supplied by a hysterical Roop).
Claire
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