TV8 vs brakes! (A non fun moment)

[djtaylor]

Just thought I'd recount this little tale of a "moment" that I had last week.

I pulled into a car park where I dropped my sister off at the entrance to greet her daughter, then pulled away, further entering the car park only to find that when taking my foot off the accelerator (which had only been on the floor momentarily), was now stuck on the floor! (I didn't actually know that it was stuck on the floor at the time, my mind considered things like carb linkage jammed etc.)

(Car is an automatic) At this point, stand on the brake only to find that the Triumph V8 when going full chat is quite capable of overpowering the brakes.

So there I was, full throttle V8 going across the car park with the front brakes locked up and on full steering lock. I was slightly heading towards vehicles to my left and the end of the car park straight ahead. Full steering lock was giving me no steering because of the brakes being locked but I equally I didn't want to release the brakes and increase speed. It's one of those things that probably didn't last many seconds and resulted in me turning the engine off before anything bad actually happened.

At this point, I had drawn two nice long (40m or so) black lines on the car park and three coach drivers figured it was time to question my parentage and mental capacity while waxing lyrical about what the value of their coaches were worth, at no time taking a moment to actually listen and appreciate that I really had no interest in driving my (insured) classic into their (insured) coaches.

What was the cause? Footwell carpet snagged the top of the accelerator pedal, preventing the spring from returning.

I'm sure that I was thought of as a complete knob going full bore across a car park and being perceived to have been larking about but hey ho, check those carpets!

[jagorstag]

Crikey David, that was a hair raising moment!!! Glad you were able to come to a halt and the problem was something as simple as a snagged carpet...

[CJG]

Hi David
Had a sweat on just reading that, last time i had my carpets out to clean, noticed the drivers side was quite frayed around the edges around the peddle area in particular. Will look into that Thank's for sharing your experience and glad it wasn't more costly.
Chris

[djtaylor]

Minor thing, i'm the David version, the other one is the Dave

[DJT]

Minor thing, i'm the David version, the other one is the Dave

Would you be referring to me?

I had similar several years ago approaching a busy roundabout. The end of the accelerator cable had fouled the carburettor linkage, jamming it on full throttle. Since then I’ve always trimmed this cable down to about 1 inch, and sealed the end with heat-shrink sleeping.

[djtaylor]

Would you be referring to me?

Of course!

[MandM]

Would you be referring to me?

I had similar several years ago approaching a busy roundabout. The end of the accelerator cable had fouled the carburettor linkage, jamming it on full throttle. Since then I’ve always trimmed this cable down to about 1 inch, and sealed the end with heat-shrink sleeping.

Had the same thing after changing my throttle cable, cut it back as above after changing underwear.

[flying farmer]

Had the same thing happen to me with my Rover V8 engined Toledo back in the mid eighties.

I found the choke linkage fouled the throttle if full boot was given with the choke out.

That was in a pub car park, and by the time I had switched the ignition off, I had slid into the only gap between two parked cars missing one by the thickness of a fag paper.

Fortunately for me there were two 45 gallon plastic drums full of water at the end of the space which I punted straight over the low wall and apparently flooded the outside corridor and the ladies and gents toilets, but saved me from going into the wall.

I didn't find out this until a few weeks later when I was again visiting my friends in Wiltshire, as having pushed the choke in, I felt the throttle pedal spring back up and decided a hasty get away might be a good idea!