Bunny Hopping the Car

Off-topic
1

OK guys, sharpen your pencils and your wits. Your chance to have a go a women drivers begins now. :stuck_out_tongue: Feel free, I can take a joke, although my main hope is that someone can explain what was going on today, and offer some advice.

I car share to work with a friend, and this week it has been her turn to drive. She parks her Citroen Saxo, front wheel drive, manual 1.1 Litre, on the driveway. Her drive has an 8 or 10 degree slope on it and she always reverses up onto it and applies the handbrake, which is exactly what she did last night. At this point you may be impressed, thinking “How sensible, she has thought about getting back safely out into the traffic, and has done really well, for a girl, to reverse onto her drive.” The reality is that the sunroof leaks in the rain, wetting the seat if she parks with the front of the car higher than the rear.

Today she starts the engine, engages first gear, and immediately stalls the car. Tries again, same result. Third try, more revs and the car creeps forwards, stalling once it is perfectly blocking the pavement. “It feels stiff”, she says. The handbrake is off, so I suspect the handbrake mechanism has seized on. She tries to reverse it back onto the drive but the car just would not go at all, and she is starting to panic. I am volunteering into trying to drive it.

As I try to reverse, the rear end of the car is lifting itself up: very weird! I give it a bit more and the rear end suddenly skips a couple of inches backward, and drops to its usual level. Leaving the car across the pavement is not good, so I continue, and the car skips and bounces its way back up the drive. :astonished: After about 20 such skips all suddenly eases off, and the car works properly again.

So my theory: front wheel drive car, engine over the wheels, passengers in front, so more traction from the front wheels. Rear wheels not rotating, locked up by the brake pads. As the car reverses, the rear suspension somehow winds itself up, lifting the rear of the car. Suddenly the tyres slip, causing the bunny hop. Repeats until brakes suddenly free themselves.
Now it must have looked very funny watching me bunny hop the back of the car up the driveway, but is my theory good, and what do we need to do to prevent it happening again? Or is it likely a one off. No more problems were seen driving the 8 miles to work today.

So, do any of you mechanics out there have any good advice please?

Nao

2

if it happens, get it checked out by a garage. IMHO.

when i first read this i thought “why the hell is Naomi bunnyhopping on her unicycle over a car???”

3

Nao,

From what you describe, it sounds exactly as you have surmised, that the rear wheels were locked. Now to determine why. It’s always best to start with simple so assume that it was indeed the handbrake. If your friend had pulled the brake lever with more force the night before, perhaps it was enough to stick it. We seem to have a shortage of Citroens here in Rochelle so I don’t know the car at all. If the car has brake drums in the rear which I suspect it does and if you’re mechanically inclined in the least bit, it should be easy enough to remove the tire…sorry, tyre…and the brake drum, and have someone move the emergency brake lever slightly to see if the mechanism in the rear brakes is moving then relaxing. It would be best to check both sides one at a time.

As for the rear of the car lifting, you were almost right. Actually if the rear wheels aren’t working, the front-wheel drive wheels are sort of driving the front of the car into the ground. If the front of the car goes to ground, the rear of the car moves skyward.

Definitely if it happens again and again, get it checked out. Brakes are usually an important part of driving. Usually if a problem happens once or twice, I ignore it. That’s not a hard and fast rule though, depends on the problem. If it becomes persistent, I get it checked out.

Bruce

4

My thoughts exactly. [Hi, JJuggle…]

5

you may be able to work yourself a world record before fixing it?

6

A parking brake that is used every day shouldn’t seize, as that corrosion in the cables is always being knocked loose. It’s parking breaks that are only used 3 times a year that tend to sieze.

That happened with my POS S-10 a number of years ago. We hacksawed the brake lines about 6 inches from the year wheels and that let it snap loose. Stupid cable friction. I didn’t need a parking break in Iowa anyway.

7

Can you do it again and video it? Sounds funny!

Rock on!
Edd

8

Haha, female drivers…

:stuck_out_tongue:

9

Yeah, haha female drivers…

Danica.bmp (137 KB)

10

It’s not fair to start set us up for an opportunity to make jokes about female drivers, only to ruin it with a perfectly reasonable diagnosis of the problem. How are we supposed to make sexistic jokes about that?

11

So when do you think you will make a movie of you freestyling this car. I would like to see some wheelwalking in it. And maybe some gaping or some skinny riding.

12

Your description sounds accurate to me as well. Every car I know of, except Subarus (I had two), have the parking brake as a cable to the rear wheels. The reason the car tilted was the power being applied to the front wheels was compressing the front suspension, and taking load off the rear. The front was going down and the rear was going up.

As Seager said, it does seem odd that the brake would stick if she uses it daily, and as she needs it daily it would not be a bad idea to have it checked. Now that it’s unstuck, working it several times on-off should help loosen things up, not that they shouldn’t have been loose anyway.

It’s also called an Emergency. Brake (not break; we cyclists should learn the difference). Especially useful if your car is an automatic. "Hanging your car on the Park mechanism is not what it’s designed for, but I see people doing it all the time. Iowa is not 100% flat, and you might find yourself leaving the state from time to time… :astonished:

13

Well, it’s flat enough that all you have to do is stear the car into a curb to park it if you are worried about it rolling - but it was a manual, so I just stuck it in reverse when parked. The car had more problems than that, however, bad exhaust, no first gear, bad starter, and the gas tank was held on with ratchet straps.

I drive a different truck now, esp since I’m in Oregon. The S-10 wouldn’t have made it up any of the mountain passes.

14
15

Many women drivers make it far too easy. I thought you would appreciate the challenge. It’s not my role to make it easy for you. Try harder.:stuck_out_tongue:

You may like this one however:

Nao

16

Genreally with drum brakes that seize the best course of action is to drive them backwards till they unlock, because the front edge of the shoe is pushed against the drum by the slave cylinder, where as the back end is held on a pivot and therefore comes to the drum at a gradual angle it will free more easily this way. It usually works better to rev the car hard and dump the clutch to get the brakes free rather than progressing slowly backwards. It it happens frequently i would deffinitely consider removing the drum, checking the linings to make sure they’re not damaged, removing any brake dust (watch out, that dust isn’t good for you) in there, checking the inside of the drum then correctly setting them when you reassemble.

I say this with trepidation but I think it’s unlikely to be a safety issue, the back brakes on most cars with drums barely work anyway due to wear and lack of correct adjustment, with disks upfront you’d expect something like 70% of the work to be done by the front anyway.

Of course you could forget the handbrake and just leave it in first overnight, the braking force will be far higher than can be exerted by the handbrake anyway.

17

That assumes her transmission is in good shape. I’ve had a car slip out first while parked before. That sucked. I’d also use reverse anyway, as on most cars it’s a tighter gear than first and less likely to slip out and roll forward.

Redundancy is key. Parking brake and leaving it in gear, or sans parking brake atleast steer it into a curb.

18

Nao!

I’m shocked at you.

Men drivers are just as bad. I have never seen a woman drive overtake on a blind corner just because the person infront wasn’t going quite fast enough. I saw two men do it last week though. One poor little old guy coming in the other direction nearly had a heart attack - he nearly had to stop his car to let the other guy pull in - good job he was driving so slowly at the time.

There - everyone can drive badly - women, men, old people, young people, etc.

Cathy

19

Haha, canine drivers…
:stuck_out_tongue:

20

some big bunny, hopping your car

Since I already contributed early in this thread, I’ll add:

I like it when people hop in late, and don’t read anything except the title of teh thread, then contribute.

Like, wow, that must have been some big bunny, hopping your car. Did you call the animal control people?