Lately, every time when I speed through curves, freeway ramps and the like at higher speeds than in any other vehicle before, I wonder how save it really is.

Has anyone rolled over an RX-8 on a ramp or curve yet?

-Peter

 

Hell yeah! Do it all the time! I just pick myself up, brush myself off, and I'm back in the race! :D

 

I don't think it's likely for it to rollover. It'll spin for sure if pushed beyond its limits...

 

It will roll all right. When the traction lets go and you slide sideways at 100mph, then the wheels at the top of the slide catch and BAM you start flipping over.
Or here is another one. You got that 130mph side slide going and the car lifts up when a wind gust hits and flips over backwards. I saw that on TV once. No, more than once. Probably a thousand times on ESPN in the nascar promo stuff they show.
Could me a wild ride. I wonder if all the airbags deploy in a crash like that?

 

A girl I dated rolled over her Celica GTS on a freeway ramp when she had almost passed the exit and tried to catch in the last minute. Having driven that car I would not have thought it'd happen.

It was a DUI; no idea how fast she went.

I think it'd be possible with the RX-8 as well. I'm not going to prove it with mine though :D

 

What a load of crap. An RX-8 will NEVER roll by itself. You can corner until the limits of traction, slide, spin, recover from slides - it simply can not roll like that. This isn't some big top-heavy SUV here.

IF you hit something while sliding sideways, like a curb or the wheels dig into soft dirt, then the car could roll.

ptiemann, similar to the advice given in today's thread about the guy who spun his RX-8 and hit a tree - if you don't know what will happen at the limits of cornering, and more importantly don't know what to do when you hit the limits, then do NOT explore the limits on public roads. You will only damage your car, you, and others. Find a performance driving school (or two, or three), and maybe take up autocross and attending track days. Those are by far the best things you can do to improve the handling and performance of your car - forget those intakes, exhausts, coilovers, big wheels, etc.

Oh, and crumpmd - you need the performance driving school too. You haven't got a clue what you're talking about!

Regards,
Gordon

 

does almost count?

while doing some track racing, i hit a corner too soon and corrected too much having the inside tires ride over the hazards. the car behind me said that the inside tires lifted off the ground a few inches. i didn't feel any difference. technically not a rollover but i was two-wheel drifting for a split second. i'm sure if i was going faster and counter steered even more i might have been able to get it up a bit more.
i dont know about flipping it on a flat curve though, that'll probably be pretty hard; you'll spin out before you lift off i think. unless maybe your outter wheels lock, or like me you hit an incline of some sort. i think it's safe to take those onramps and such at high speeds as long as you know the limits of your car.

gordon, ease up man. we're all likeminded people here.

 

I try daily, to no avail.

 

Wow, a performance driving snob.

You can roll a RX-8 if you really try~ If you don't believe me, lend me your RX-8 and I'll prove it to you. :D

 

It might be tough on flat ground, but as soon as you put obstacles (curbs, rocks, etc.) in the mix, I think it's doable.

 

Come on you guys. Gordon's post is great! The emotion in his post is a welcome breath of fresh air in an ocean of stale posts.

 

Gee Gordon, thanks for the update!
But I will happily go on thinking that IN THE REAL WORLD, ON THE HIGHWAYS, ONRAMPS ECT......
That the 8 in a high speed slide would catch something and flip in the blink of an eye.
On the skidpad, probably not. But we were not talking about the pad or the track, were we. We were talking about going around the highway ramps too damn fast.
Regards,
David B Crump, MD, FACS,
PS. Does the Bondurant course at Phoenix count?

 

any car can roll, but i wouldnt be too worried about it in the 8 even in real world situations. the engine is nice and low and theres no real weight above the center line.

 

David, no fair, you're changing your answer by throwing qualifiers in there!

You first said When the wheels "catch', ie regain traction, the car will not flip all by itself. Now you say IF it would catch something then it would flip - that's a very different scenario from just having the car sliding then regaining traction, isn't it?

I think we can all agree that if you slide into something sideways, that you can make the car roll (I stated that in my post also). However, focus on what the original question was, people! Just by cornering hard on curves, freeway ramps, etc. at higher speeds than he's driven in other vehicles, an RX-8 will NOT roll by itself. In scenarios where an SUV or truck or other high centre of gravity vehicle will roll over, an RX-8 will not. Just by driving fast - even to the point of sliding and regaining traction - an RX-8 will NOT roll. Slide it into a curb, soft dirt, etc., sure, then you can make an RX-8 roll with external interference.

OK, so perhaps we were interpreting the original question differently. My apologies, David, for my rudeness. Peter - if you do not slide into a curb or off the road, you will never be able to make your RX-8 roll. BUT - I would strenuously recommend that you don't go trying to find the limits on public roads either. If you're not familiar with the limits of sports car handling and what the car does when it exceeds them, and what you need to do when you exceed them, then your chances of rolling an RX-8 (via external forces applied by curbs, soft shoulders, etc) are much greater. Save the 'pushing the limits' stuff for a driving school - always!

Regards,
Gordon

 

Thanks, Gordon and congrats to your 2000th post.

 

2000 posts, and his TOTAL post count is 2038.. what a shame!!

Oh yea, I think you can get the 8 to roll, but you'd probably have to hit something.

 

I'm no performance driver but I've driven cars with higher centers of gravity, a Mustang for instance, and they will give you the feel that they 'want' to roll at speeds far below that of the 8. I agree that experimentation and learning is best done in a controlled environment but .. there's this ONE exit ramp... I have pushed 95 mph on that ramp on several mornings (no traffic, not racing, early-early morning, if something screwed up, it'd be my loss only) and I've never even felt the wheel pull when I enter the turn. It's banked of course but I doubt that I could have felt comfortable in the Mustang at 70 mph on the same curve.

What's that got to do with rolling one? Good question. I guess based on this bit of "extreme" turn-taking my impression is that the back wheels would be the first thing to leave the road. And that they would swing around in the direction of the curve. I don't want to find out but I still doubt that would flip the car.

There's an interesting physics problem in here somewhere for someone. You'd need to define a lot of "unknowns" but if you could calculate the center of gravity of the car, what amount of force it would take in a perfect sideways slide at "x" miles an hour to lift the car to a point where the center of gravity were high enough to permit a rollover. Then compare that amount of force to the frictional forces of the tires on the road in such a configuration. I'm assuming that if you can't acheive enough friction to equal the force required to lift the car (to pivot the center of gravity using the sideways tires as your fulcrum); then you won't roll over.

The rocks, curbs, soft shoulders etc. referred to above serve to bolster that frictional force and thus put the car in a position such that a rollover could be achieved.

Having said all that, unless your dead drunk, brain-dead, darn unfortunate, or trying; I can't see anyone flipping an 8 during normal use.