The driver error thread is pretty much dead, but there's one interesting comment at the end:

Since I'm taking my car in for service in the next week or so, are there any specific things I can have them check which may be relevant?

TXR

 

Get 'em to check the alignment, specifically rear toe. Having rear toe OUT is generally a bad thing and leads to a tail-happy car. My last car (99 miata) was delivered from the factory with a bit of rear toe out. The car was downright scary to drive in the rain until I got that fixed.

 

tire tread depth and suspension alignment being equal; depth of puddle being equal, the effect of hydroplaning should be the same.

Driver weight and car weight may make a difference but probably not much.

 

Check all alignment and suspension settings!
There have been several threads of people who had less than 600 miles on their car and the settings were WAY OFF when they had them checked or were ready to have them adjusted to their needs. Some have suspected it was from a rough ride over on the transport ship. Bottom line, some owners may be picking up a car that just is not right from the dealer. After all if these morons can leave spring spacers in, do you really think they would spend the time to check the 4-wheel settings???

Could the tires be inconsistent? We are after all talking about the same company that brought us in the US the Firestone Wilderness series. I await the flames, but before you fire up the tourch keep in mind my favorite tires for the street on my CRX-Si, has been the Potenza RE-71s.

Great question lane.

 

bridgestone and firestone may belong to the same company, the two subdivisions are very different and functionally independant. bridgestone tires are designed and made in japan whereas firestone tires are designed and manufactured by a failed company resurrected by bridgestone. in fact, the problematic firestone tires came from one specific tire manufacturing facility. i dont think its fair to lump all firestones and bridgestones togather.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by s22k
[B]bridgestone and firestone may belong to the same company, the two subdivisions are very different and functionally independant.

 

My job is to raise questions, I have no idea if this is a factor or not. 99% of me says it is not a factor, I mean how could it??? Honda picked these tires and the Potenza is a name that runs on several F-1 cars.

I just think if 85% or more of the sudden oversteer problems are due to basic inexperience/overconfidence, but then what do we point the finger at for the other 15%? Who can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that 100% of the sudden oversteer situations were caused by complete stupidity?

I'll will say this, when my Mom bought her new '01 Subaru Outback and it came with Firestone tires, I went out and bought 4 Michelin Pilots, put them on the car and threw away the brand new Firestones, Mom still thinks I lost my mind that day.

Part of me wants to think all the accidents are due to stupid drivers who have no experience. The other part of me wonders if even after 11 years of driving schools I won't be posting one of those "I crashed my car last night" threads.

I don't know what it is, but I suspect there is more to it than just inexperienced drivers.

IMHO.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Triple-H
[B]My job is to raise questions, I have no idea if this is a factor or not. 99% of me says it is not a factor, I mean how could it??? Honda picked these tires and the Potenza is a name that runs on several F-1 cars.

 

TXRacer, thanks for starting this thread, I went to do it and got sidetracked with a bunch of other neat threads...dang this board takes a lot of my time!

Anyway, with all of the spin outs happening to both experienced and inexperienced drivers it seems like there might be one or more conditions the could be improved. Obviously the first pick is the tires, and that well might be the case; however there are a lot of us driving on those same tires w/o problems in the same or worse conditions.

So, I'd like to suggest that we get a few cars from each side of the equation; side A being the "No Problem" experience, and side B being the "Car always wants to spin out" experience. Preferably all stock (tires included) so we have a better test group. If we can get that we can do some comparison tests and perhaps find some common traits that a FAQ could alert owners to check for.

A good comment recently was that rear toe out could be a cause for problems like those reported. Maybe this could be the first candidate for these tests?

Oh, and I'll put my mostly stock (performance wise) S2000 up for testing on.

 

After reading dlq04's post (written while I typed mine) I'll add that I think most of the accidents are driver error. However, I think it's a good idea to do the research and find out if any problems exist. If we find anything, most likely there are one off problems (like rear toe out due to shipping) on some cars...but won't we all be surprised if we find out something really is wrong?

Oh, and another really good test that would be very revealing; if we can get two cars w/drivers on side A and B to get together at a track or large open parking lot (ie, somewhere safe to experiment) we could get some valuable insight. For instance, if both drivers get the same feel at the test site (ie, A = no problem, B = spin out) and then switch cars what will happen? If driver A then has problems in car B, I'd say that car B is suspect. If driver A has no problems with car B, driver B's skills in an S2000 are suspect. (Obviously, both cars should still be checked out for differences.)

thoughts?