Lost control of 35is !

[JustCruzin]

It has been a whole year (almost) since I was fortunate enough to get a 35is and we have just over 6000 miles of some absolutely exhilarating driving behind us now. No regrets at all.

I had a rather terrifying experience though recently where on my usual run to work I completely lost control and thought the car and myself had had it. It was a slightly wet morning in the early hours of a Sunday morning and I was coming off the M25 at junction 4 on to the A21 spur on the roundabout taking a right turn. I was doing about 40-50mph as I exited the roundabout (this is a daily route for me and I was not pushing it) and as got onto to the A21 spur dual carriageway the rear end of my zed completely lost traction. I had no control over the car. The back swung to left and then to the right and continued doing this like pendulum- my heart was in my mouth. The very last thing that occurred was me seeing the central reservation barrier flying into to side of the me....

We stopped inches short of colliding with it. I pulled into the hard shoulder and another driver stopped to check on me and said they thought was definitely going to collide with the central reservation..... I have never had such a terrifying experience in all my driving years. I am over the moon that there was no collision but boy was I scared, and still am

The only thing I can think is whether there was some oil on the road along with albeit slightly wet conditions....

Still in one piece!

Cheers

JC

[Stark]

Phew, glad you're ok and all well.

I am sure we have all had those kind of moments

Once, I was driving along and the next thing I knew a motorcyclist had overtaken a car, come onto my lane, not realising how fast I was going and just managed to dive in whilst I braked hard. He would have died certainly if he had hit my Range Rover.

[tomscott]

Glad your ok! But just reminds you of the respect the cars need, and they the electrical systems can't always save you! Pure driver skill to keep you on the road!

[Maniac]

Welcome to rear wheel drive and tank slappers.

Good to hear you survived without a bent car or head.

[simonlpearce]

At least your ok, thats the main thing.

I had similar in my E36 track car. Was on my way home in rush hour traffic, cars up ahead were slowing and i had to brake reasonably hard but by no means an emergency stop. The car just flipped 180 deg at 70mph and i spun from lane 3 across 2 lanes of traffic and ended up in a gap between 2 cars that had previously crashed on the central reservation. A bit like when you see a stunt driver do a handbrake parallel park, only i wasn't in control. Was some divine intervention that prevented me hitting either car which were less than 20 foot apart and the people stood behind them.

They kindly pointed out that where i spun was exactly the spot the 2 cars had crashed so there was likely fluid on the floor.

On the plus side i did get a rolling road block just to get me going again, which was fun. I did buy a lottery ticket that night but nothing came of it

[CornishRob]

I found the traction poor in the 35is on a greasy road. Needs an LSD, although if it broke traction when you were not really acceleration, not much can help.

I came off a roundabout with full throttle in a 3.5is and the TC light was on and it was all over the place. Did the same in my M and not even the TC came on. Was within about 20-30 mins of each drive and was greasy - not wet!

Glad all is well though.

[monkadill]

If you had owned a S2000 that would have been a familiar experience! Glad your ok.

[Bradders75]

Nasty but at least you came out unscathed. I had one of my biggest near misses a couple of weeks ago when I went around a bend in my M135i and didn't spot some standing water. I'm still not sure how I kept the car out of a field.

[Bing]

Assuming your tyres aren't needing changed then probably 99% something on the road... Something similar happened to a forum member on our run to Skye, also not pushing it at all as the weather was a tad 'inclement'. They've not mentioned it publicly though, so I'll let them pipe up if they want to.

Glad you and the car are both ok though

[srhutch]

Diesel spill at a guess.

[KERMIT1970]

Not good. Must have been something on the roundabout. There notorious for diesel being spilt from old vans & trucks. Glad your ok

[pvr]

Assuming your tyres aren't needing changed then probably 99% something on the road... Something similar happened to a forum member on our run to Skye, also not pushing it at all as the weather was a tad 'inclement'. They've not mentioned it publicly though, so I'll let them pipe up if they want to.

Glad you and the car are both ok though

We all know what those Alpinas can be like without LSD

[PerryGunn]

Assuming your tyres aren't needing changed then probably 99% something on the road... Something similar happened to a forum member on our run to Skye, also not pushing it at all as the weather was a tad 'inclement'. They've not mentioned it publicly though, so I'll let them pipe up if they want to.

That was me... the reason I haven't mentioned it in the posts about Skye is that it still concerns me a bit as I don't know for sure what caused it and, to me, that's more troubling than the incident itself.

It was a very scary moment as I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, in fact we were taking things reasonably easy because of the damp conditions, the rain had stopped but the roads were still wet, and the back end just 'went' on the exit of a fairly tight left curve - rock wall on one side, armco on the other and me going sideways

Luckily I managed to catch it before hitting the rock or the armco so no bodywork damage - although I have two wheels that will need some serious spit and polish from churning through a bit of earth and I'll be having a precautionary 4-wheel alignment done

Approach was no different to the dozens of similar corners we took that weekend and the tyres are good (PS2s with loads of tread). People have suggested various things from a patch of oil/diesel to a nasty bump making the rear end light. Cindy was recording at the time and the audio has me saying that it was a bit slippery during the previous corner so the tyres may have picked up some oil there - unfortunately all the recording has for the subsequent corner is shots of the inside of the car and the audio has us talking normally followed by lots of swearing...

[HillWalker]

Glad your OK, just be thankful you weren't on a motorbike, after nearly 50 years riding bikes, mostly on BMs I've had some hairy moments on spilt diesel, and two guys I know ended up sliding down a German autobahn at 90mph after they braked on some spilt diesel from a previous accident.

[pvr]

Don't worry Perry, oil can do some scary things. I have done a 360 in my 740 on the way to Gatwick, you know from the slip road of the M23 onto the Gatwick road and just driving straight on that dual carriage way the back end just turned and did a complete 360. It must have looked spectacular as all the cars stopped behind me but by luck did not touch anything and just drove on as if nothing happened.