Tin Foil Hats for Toyota Owners?

[heironymouspasparagus]

Hard to say what happened with the Sikes guy in CA, but he was able to slow to under 50 with the CHP talking to him by PA, then go ahead and slow down and stop.  911 dispatcher told him repeatedly - as in over and over - to put the car in neutral and turn off the key.  He refused to do either.  He made a comment about "you had to be there".  I think there was a whole lot of panic involved.

At the end, he was able to stop.  Then the CHP backed up to touch his bumper AFTER he had come to a stop.  He did not touch the Prius until after the car was stopped.  (All this from CHP statement and 911 call transcripts.)

After driving a butt-load of cars and trucks for well over 3.0 million miles, including Corolla and Camry, I am having a tough time believing the brakes could not stop a Prius.  Or any other available commercially available car/truck with an automatic transmission.  Or a manual for that matter.

I tend to lean to the idea that he is an at least somewhat less than exceptional driver.  (Personal responsibility anyone?)

I guess the 250 applications of brake at about 1/2 pressure makes me skeptical.

[custosnox]

After driving a butt-load of cars and trucks for well over 3.0 million miles, including Corolla and Camry, I am having a tough time believing the brakes could not stop a Prius.  Or any other available commercially available car/truck with an automatic transmission.  Or a manual for that matter.

Now I have to ask, have you ever attempted to brake while excellerating?  How about while excellerating when already in motion at 70mph?  I've had an excellerator stick on me.  Brakes don't exactly overcome this with a great deal of ease.  I'm not saying that this guy shouldn't have handled the situation differantly, if the cause was ligitamate, but I'm saying that a situation like this is a different situation then your day to day driving. 

[dbacks fan]

Now I have to ask, have you ever attempted to brake while excellerating?  How about while excellerating when already in motion at 70mph?  I've had an excellerator stick on me.  Brakes don't exactly overcome this with a great deal of ease.  I'm not saying that this guy shouldn't have handled the situation differantly, if the cause was ligitamate, but I'm saying that a situation like this is a different situation then your day to day driving. 

I have in my 30 years of driving, cooked the brakes on a couple of cars, both disc and drum brakes and have had them fail. The first time was with my Triumph TR7 after a couple of intense driving sessions, I had them fail from high speed glazing of the brake pads on the front of the car to the point that no matter how mch pressure I applied to the pedal nothing was going to happen, this was in 1983. In 1992 I cooked the brakes on a 1990 Honda Civic Si carrrying too much speed through the Salt River Canyon on Highway 60 (the same one that runs through OK and MO) that by the time that I got to the bottom of the canyon my brakes were smoking. I have also cooked the brakes on race cars at Hallett, and on all of these occasions there was no ABS or traction control on any of the vehicles. This does not include the times that I was working for freight companies in Tulsa, that because of the load on the truck I was driving exceeded the limit of the truck I was driving.

I am not an expert, nor an engineer in the automitve realm, but I know from personal experience that an engine wide open can overcome the the braking system on most cars/trucks. If you are doing 65 or 70 in a car, and it accelerates without your contol, you can easily burn out the brakes in a short period of time because the compounds of the brake pads are very mundane, they are soft so that the average driver only has to put in minimal effort to slow the car down.

On the opposite side I have owned and driven cars with agessive brakes, crossed drilled rotors and more agressive pads, that you actually have to ride the brakes a little to build heat in them so they function properly, if you don't they lock up very easily.

I still think that some of the issues for Toyota are the fact that they have cars that have unintended acceleration issues, but the fact that we have become reliant on driver aids in our cars, that we are no longer drivers in our cars, we are becoming merely passengers as we travel.


Give me a cable connected throttle, a clutch that requires my left foot, and a gear shift that requires my right hand. Keep the ABS, traction control, and the manumatic for spirited driving, I drive my car, I am involved in how it moves down the road.

[sauerkraut]

There is alot to the mix here, the runaway cars happened more than to just person, and if the anti-lock brake is tied in to the computer, the system may not allow braking while the engine is under power, the computer may not even allow shifting when a car is in motion (as a safety feature to prevent transmission damage) .... Even  If you can brake it will do alot of damage and over heat the brake pads and rotors and then the brakes fade out and will become useless and the car is still speeding away, some woman in Tennessee with a runnaway car on I-40 said that she could not brake, turn off the key or shift into "N" then just as suddenly as the car sped out of control it all came back to normal and then she pulled over.

[buckeye]

dbacks, I'm not surprised you cooked brakes in the circumstances mentioned, especially with an overloaded truck!  Sikes is a different story...  They say he repeatedly and alternately stabbed at both pedals, presumably in a panicked stupor.  I might be able to see overheating the brakes in that circumstance.

Surely you're aware that an ABS-equipped pedal (so to speak) does a better job of threshold braking than any human.  Locking 'em up wouldn't have overheated the brakes but wouldn't have done a safe job of stopping him, either.  If Sikes had stood on the pedal, I have every confidence they would've stopped his car.

Gotta disagree with you on the brake/throttle override thing.  How do we left-foot brake at autocross, then?    However, we're in total agreement on "driving aids".  Mostly, they just allow shoddier service from the nut behind the wheel.

I've had an excellerator stick on me.

Oh, I wish that would happen to me.  Now a sticking accelerator, that's a different story... 

[bugo]

I would have to say that "simpler is better" depends on what your purpose is.  With cars, if you want something that is easy to work on, then yes, it applies.  However, if you want efficiency, better emmisions and safety, then simpler is not better .  I would hate to be driving an old detroit beast daily with today's gas prices. 

The 1960 Ford Falcon with the 144 cubic inch six was rated at 30 MPG on the highway.  It would be easy today to build a simple, carbureted car with a 4 cylinder engine that would get 35-40 MPG.

[bugo]

I don't understand why manufacturers have changed to drive by wire for everything.  What's wrong with a simple throttle cable? 
I've read that steer by wire is coming.  I don't think I would buy a car without mechanical steering.

[bugo]

Simpler doesn't let you get almost 400 horsepower out of a naturally aspirated V6. Simpler is wasteful of resources.

Who makes a ~400 horse NA V6 engine?  I know Ford and GM both have 300+ horsepower non-blown V6 engines, and Ford makes a twin turbo V6 with close to 400 HP, but I'm not aware of a near 400 horsepower naturally aspirated V6.

[bugo]

All cars have that now (fly by wire throttle controls), and any car that has EFI has had it for years. 

My 12 year old Chevy has EFI and a throttle cable.  Never had any problems with it.  In this case, I believe simpler is better.

[bugo]

If the way the pump is driven is the only difference, the feedback should not be an issue.  

GM has frequently (always?) used a slightly flexible segment in the steering column connection to the driving gear in the gearbox or rack & pinion (Backed up by hard stops to limit deflection) to allow the boost, at the same pump pressure, to be modulated to provide feedback.  At least from the 50s to 1998, those are the years I have any shop manuals for. I remember that Chrysler products (friend's 66 Charger) had a lot less steering feel than my 66 Buick Skylark GS.  I don't know how the MOPAR system worked.

The Charger had torsion bar front suspension.  In theory, it should have handled better than the Buick but that may or may not be true.

[Red Arrow]

The 1960 Ford Falcon with the 144 cubic inch six was rated at 30 MPG on the highway.  It would be easy today to build a simple, carbureted car with a 4 cylinder engine that would get 35-40 MPG.

My sister (reluctantly) had a 63 Falcon with the 144 cu in 6.  That series of engines would probably not pass emissions requirements today.  It didn't even have a PCV valve, just a road draft tube.  That engine also only had about 85 HP.  Most drivers today would not call that acceptable performance.  When the 144 in engine ate #6 piston, I got a 200 cu in 6 that bolted in.  120 HP, I think.  That had reasonable performance, even with the Ford-o-matic 2sp auto trans.  I don't know if my sister kept track of the gas mileage.  The Falcon I would have liked was the one with the 260 V8.

[Red Arrow]

I don't understand why manufacturers have changed to drive by wire for everything.  What's wrong with a simple throttle cable? 
I've read that steer by wire is coming.  I don't think I would buy a car without mechanical steering.

With multiple "throttle" plates, they can control them individually to counter act any unbalance of any intake manifold.  Helps performance and emissions.

[Red Arrow]

The Charger had torsion bar front suspension.  In theory, it should have handled better than the Buick but that may or may not be true.

I know it had torsion bar suspension on the front end.  Springs can be tuned to what the designer wants.  Torsion bar takes up less space.  I don't know if there was any design advantage to torsion bar over coil springs but my first inclination would be no or or the Formula 1 race cars would have been using it.  Most of them that I remember from the era had coil springs.  I won't say the Charger handled any better or worse than the Buick GS, only that the feel of the steering in the Buick was better.

[heironymouspasparagus]

My '61 Mercury Comet station wagon had that Falcon drive train - small straight 6.  It was great and I would like to have another.  It got better mileage than the '61 VW.  23 in city and 26-27 on road.  There were no mileage ratings at that time.  That didn't happen for years.

Brakes - just tested that stopping thing this weekend.  Thursday evening on turnpike (no traffic around) and minimal fade.  I only did about 1/2 dozen hard brakes - not the 250 half stops that Sikes did.  Also, did basically the same thing just west of Las Vegas on about 28 Dec.  Highway 160, just east of Mountain Spring is a nice little slope that drops down into the valley on west side of Vegas (interesting view on Google maps, satellite view).  Pickup and 10,000 lb trailer.  Even with lower gear (2nd automatic), there was plenty of braking.  Could definitely smell brakes.  Got some fade - good thing it's only about 6 miles of 9% grade.  But was also definitely able to stop when I wanted.

[sauerkraut]

The 1960 Ford Falcon with the 144 cubic inch six was rated at 30 MPG on the highway.  It would be easy today to build a simple, carbureted car with a 4 cylinder engine that would get 35-40 MPG.

That's correct, also the old Ford 300 six cylinders that was put in pick-up trucks for many years got good fuel mileage back in the 1960's and early 1970's then they started with emission controls and the fuel mileage dropped.