Don't do this!

[justinbaldwin]

Well, it finally happened...

i pranged Paloma! i feel i should share this with you all in the hope that you don't do the same.

the Southern English amongst this readership will know the A303 well, it's a fairly straight dual carriageway with lots of roundabouts. Exiting these roundabouts is Porsche heaven. Sweeping bends covered in really grippy shelltex. In the dry there is no end of power you can lay down, and i have yet to be followed by a car that can stay anywhere close to the P car through these bends when driven in anger (read delight!).

when i began my journey yesterday the road was dry, and i enjoyed the first few of these roundabouts as usual, but as i progressed up towards London, there had obviously been a bit of rain and the road was damp.

unfortunately, in the damp, there is a very definite amount of grip available, and it's not much. as i fed in the power, on the bend, i drove over the end of the shelltex and on to the ordinary road surface which has nothing like so much grip. and then all merry hell let loose. the wheels span and lost grip, the back started sliding sideways, i corrected but then the slide went the other way, i corrected three times but the oscillations just got bigger till the front tyre hit the grass verge and i became an ice skater. i hit a bush side-on the front wing which span me 270 degrees round in a spray of mud and grass and green stuff.

fortunately i didn't hit anything really substantial, so was able to drive off with just a dent in the wing and door, and an even bigger one in my pride. Half my car was gleaming and pristine, the other side was dented and covered in mud and grass, and had bits of trees coming out of it, which made driving through rush hour traffic very embarassing indeed. i was the laughing stock of London, and dreaded everytime the traffic came to a standstill.

familiarity breeds contempt, i have been driving this car hard in the dry for 5 years, rarely ever in the wet. they can be abused in the dry, and back end slides held, but not in the wet. i consider myself a reasonable driver, having raced motorcylces etc, however, once the back started going, i had no chance of holding it. it happened so FAST!

so if only to avoid the embarrassment of driving with half of Devon attached to your car, please take care in the wet, especially when you started out in the dry.

your chastened servant

justin

[1982911SCTarga]

Sorry about your prang, Justin. Speaking of roundabouts, do you call it morning driving through the sound and in and out the valley? Just wondering if that's a yes.

Brian

[CharlesJones]

Bad luck Justin - that's a great shame. Thanks for posting about it - it helps remind the rest of us that it is all too easy to do exactly the same thing in the wet. It's just such an easy thing to do - I spun my car after about 3 weeks of ownership, and it was just pot-luck that I was fortunate enough not to hit anything. Sounds like I did exactly the same thing as you, with the back of the car swinging like a pendulum before I lost it completely and found myself facing the opposite direction!

I think the disparity in grip between dry and wet is huge. I find that in the dry I can just fly along the winding roads to Dublin, but if its wet I am reduced to crawling. I suggest you take the financial hit and just get your car fixed as soon as you can - driving a less than perfect car can be so depressing. Good luck with it.

[304065]

Justin,

On this side of the pond we call that a "tank-slapper."

You aren't the first (and won't be the last) to relinquish control to Sir Isaac Newton, but with a slightly different damage profile insofar as most 911s leave the road blunt end first. I remember just such an incident on an onramp that resulted in departure from straight-and level. In my case it was due to a combination of tire dressing on the tread and a bit too much enthusiasm with the loud pedal.

In any event, it's only a machine, despite our emotional attachment. It can be rebuilt. . . and now you must resist the temptation to flare the fenders, RSR-style, "while you are in there."

Good luck!

John
(Old Oxonian)

[Kemo]

glad you didnt get hurt.

as stated above, you can rebuild her..bigger..faster..stronger

[tshih]

Justin,
my deepest condolenses but welcome to the I've spun a porsche in the wet club. Learn and Live safely.

best regards,
Tom

[MattKellett]

Justin - I know this road very well, having lived in Devon, Dorset and Somerset. You are correct, the roundabouts are fun, but now I guess it's really the speed cameras you have to watch out for, or at least it was the last time I was back in the country.

Sorry to see the damage - I guess you were lucky as it could've been so much worse.

Matt

[herr_oberst]

Justin - love the way you described a shi***y situation. At least your good humo(u)r seems to be intact, and the car looks fixable. Glad it wasn't worse.

Thanks for the cautionary tale.

[masraum]

Wow, that really sucks. Good luck with the fix. At least it looks like it should be a relatively cheap and easy fix.

The problem isn't that they don't do well in the wet, it's that you don't have experience driving it in the wet. I drove mine daily which means a lot of rain. They do pretty well in the rain when you have some practice.

Another thing, and I'm not necessarily recommending this, but it may have been that with the limited grip situation you weren't counter steering enough or doing it fast enough. I've been in the same situation before but got lucky. A possible option while counter intuitive is actually very effective. Just let go of the steering wheel. The suspension and alignment will actually cause the car to counter steer itself, and so long as you catch the wheel when you are pointed the right direction, you can usually save a slide that way better than if you steer it yourself. I've done it once or twice to experiment, and I've seen and heard of other doing it. I've even seen a video of Jack Olsen doing it on the track a couple of times.

[DanielDudley]

Sounds like a track day may be in order ! BTW, do make sure your tires aren't old and stale. They lose a lot of grip as they get older, especially in the cold and wet. Glad you are OK.

[justinbaldwin]

thanks for the commiserations and support, very much appreciated in these moments. still not quite sure if i should be happy or sad that i have finally lost my virginity, and in the woods too?

some follow up thoughts:

first, although the damage isn't great, it is still darn close to a write off. insurance companies apparently only cover about 60% of the their assessed value of the car. if they say the car is only worth £8,000 then that's only about £4,800 for the repair. doors are sold as complete units, about £1,500, and the new wing is just under £700, so that's almost half the budget gone already!!!

i have an agreed value of £10,000, but apparently this is simply insurance speak for 'you-can-say-whatever-you-like-about-the-value-of-your-car,-we'll-just-ignore-you-anyway,- and-make-up-our-own-mind'.

(i bet i paid extra for this 'agreed value' !)

second, I will definitely think about a wet weather track day, or a truly radical alternative would be to back off the grin pedal next time i get caught in the wet!

i've had tank-slappers on my bike, (one terrifying one on a ducati at 90mph), and the thing to do is to let go of the bars, and let it sort itself out, i've never heard the same being said for the p car. i somehow don't think i could ever drill myself to let go of the wheel during what i experienced, but i can see that it might work.

bikes and porsches are similar, in that you mustn't lift off or you are history. i know i didn't lift off, it's a maxim i live by... i remember it all happening in slow motion and what surprised me at the time was that the oscillations got bigger and bigger till i ran out of road. everytime i thought i had caught it but it went immediately into over correction. this would indicate that there was grip available had i been endowed with Sennaesque reactions. i have to reiterate that this all happened so fast that it was all a bit of a blur. i really want to clarify for those that haven't joined this particular club, that a slide in the wet is so much faster than anything in the dry. it really is best not to go there.

[SCWDP911]

Is that Paloma, the actual color? I thought your car looked like Rubinrot (Ruby Red). Sorry about your ill-fortune, but chin up. Your're not hurt aside from pride, eh?

[burgermeister]

Just from personal experience, it seems that wet traction is maybe 80% of dry traction ... as long as nothing is sliding. But the difference between the 'rolling' and 'sliding' coefficients of friction seems much, much greater in the wet... this increased nonlinearity would make it much harder to control a car in the wet at the limit. Is this a correct line of thinking?

[4flyboy]

In flying circles we call that Pilot Induced Oscillation (PIO), you are unable to correct fast enough and your inputs manage to only exacerbate the situation. It happens to the best of us. I've done it and if I'm living right I'll do it again! I'd look at it as if you were lucky in a way, usually the expensive end (read motor) winds up in the wall. Wear your battle scars and experience with pride, fix her and go driving.

Scott

[rusnak]

awww man....that was some great reading, but those sad pictures.....

at least I can offer a bit of advice from experience. First, it can be repaired easily by an old school body and paint man. Second, modern paint is pretty good in terms of color match. Third, never lend your Porsche to a Cadillac owner. This last one does not apply, but you can claim that one as your alibi.

[rallyracer]

just a little tarmac rally touch-and-go. no biggie.

[justinbaldwin]

thanks once again,

colour is rubinrot, or ruby red. The day i picked up my car i drove it around to my friends to show it off and met a beautiful Chilean lady called Paloma, who was the same age as the car, so i just named the car after her, and it stuck.

j