What's the hardest you guys have ever had to brake your M5s? What were your impressions? Using that hard braking experience is there anything you'd do differently if you encountered the same situation again?
I know this is subjective so it would help if you qualified the hard braking in terms of speed you were driving, on what type of surface, why you were braking, etc
James - the car has ABS. You just can't get into trouble. I have mashed the brakes HARD from all sorts of speeds, including recent repeated 110mph --> 35mph descents at Sears Point.
You cannot hurt the car, you will always have good control under braking, and it has no bad manners in this area. The M5 has utterly amazing brakes. I encourage you to get to know them, too. This is a good idea for any driver. Take all the loose stuff off your seats, find a deserted stretch of road, and try some "panic" stops. Remember if you brake hard enough to engage the ABS there will be some noise and some vibration in the pedal as the ABS does its thing. Don't lighten up. Just mash that sucker. If you have room, you will find you can steer at the same time and the car will respond, because the wheels simply will not skid.
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Ok, a new road just opened right near my house, its about a mile straight away just paved. So, I'm in the car with my two sons and we are blasting it!!! We start nearing 100, then 120, 130...140mph, by this time I dont DARE to take my eyes of the road!! My son was speaking out the MPH though, and we are reaching 150, 155, 160...... OH BOY its time for me to break the damn end of the road came WAY quicker then i expected!!!!! I start to hit the breaks a little to slow her down, and the tail gives!!!! We start to fish tale!!! And i have no idea what is going on i have NO DAMN CLUE as to why we lost the back........ Now see im from New York and I used to drive cars pretty hard in the snow and way before any of this ABS systems on cars. So im used to pumping the breaks, but she isnt stopping. And as everything went slowly through my mind, everything all in slow motion, I start planning my route of manuevring before we start flipping and heading in the lake across the way. And then all of a sudden I remember what they had explained us to do at the BMW Driving Experience, JUST SLAM ON THOSE DAMN BREAKS!!!!! So I lift my foot up and slam as hard as a mother on the breaks and she stops from literally 140 MPH!!. My heart was pounding so hard!!! That was something scary and exciting as hell but that will be NEVER EVER DONE AGAIN!!. My hands we literally shaking, and i have been in some crazy situations and that was WOW!! I personnally thought it was prettty amazing. We did 0-160 and back to 0 in a little less then a mile! Pretty impresive ay!? I would just like to say the breaks on this car are AMAZING!! She is heavy but she can stop. I must say that the ABS saved our lives that day. However I was curiouse to see what made the car fish out. so the next day i went to check what was around the area and there was a little stream of water running across where we breaked. We must have just hit those breaks right on the line of water which made us lose the back. AHHH! it was scary. Just thinking of it gives me the chills.Well hopefully that answers your question!! I have another story but not quite as exciting.However, if you would like to hear it just ask!
Its pretty far west but not too west! Ok, you take Glades, all the way past 441, you gunna keep going, and I think the road name is RiverSide Dr. Or something. Its new so i dont remember. But you will notice it will be on the left hand side. Or you can take Palmetto and do the same thing go all the way past 441 but it will be on the right side. Also if you can continue straight on either glades or palmetto, it goes into a another back round which is usually open, and it swings around conection glades and palmetto. BTW i thought of this if you could start on the 1 mile straight lets say on the palmetto side, head straight down it, then make left onto glades go straight and round the back bend which connects to palmetto and then back up the and take a left back onto the straight u could make a nice little race track! There arent any lights either, the only thing you gots to wathc for is oncomming traffic from glades and palmetto. Hehe but there really isnt that much! But we could close the road off. LOL!
BTW Floridans we should have a meet!!! And just race round, or go to a track and test our cars out against each other!!!!
Greg, the reason I ask the question is a neighbor hit the gate across the street. He wasn't driving an M, but had a GS400 and I was just wondering about an M5s performance in this kind of situation(not that I should compare the two cars). He braked hard, then lifted off the brake and then braked hard again. After the initial hard brake and the letting off, his car seemed to actually lurch a little and by the time he braked hard the second time he had hit the gate.
He said he was braking for a squirrel that had suddenly come back onto the road. He claimed he was on the brake the entire time but from what I saw of his brake lights that wasn't the case. I'm not sure if he was back on the gas and if thats what caused the "lurch" or what.
A few things should be addressed here on Mr. M5's comment.
1. There is a technical reason why applying additional force, or letting up slightly and trying to re-apply brakes does not have the additional effect you are expecting. In Skip Barbers class, they always speak about initial brake application being hard. If you hit the brakes at 7/10th's initially, and then try to press harder, you won't get there! The exact technical cause I forget, but I'm sure it has to do with hydraulic compression and such. I just know you need to be on them hard from the start if that is the intent.
2. Tail swapping on braking can be done, and used to be pretty common on older 911's. That car had most of the weight at the rear of course. You would brake hard at high speed and if you were not perfectly straight, the slight sideways movement would try to bring the weight around to the front. It's the same as running with your 5 year old's wagon backwards using the handle. It's going great until you push slightly off center and it stops going backwards, starts going sideways, and most likely you and the wagon's contents do a big rollover on the pavement.
In your example, you could have had just one tire get wet which will lock up until ABS relieves pressure. Given enough speed, even that brief moment of single wheel lockup can upset the cars attitude in certain situations.
3. As far as going 150 on public roads with your sons, sorry not much sympathy from me here. Take the M5 out to Moroso/Sebring for stuff like that. BMW has "track days" and "driving schools" as well as Panoz. At Moroso, you can get to experience BOTH of your above situations! An M5 can get around 135mph approaching turn 9 (is it 9?), but before you brake hard, you will have a slight kink in the road. You NEVER lift throttle or even hint at applying brakes here. That slight sideways motion combined with that speed, has sent many cars backwards off the track, over an embankment and into a nice alligator habitat! No joke.
We all tend to get together here in South Florida on these track events, and they have classes for track tours, newbies, on up to instructor levels. It's alot of fun and you'll see what you and the car can do learning from the pro's sitting in the seat beside you!
Last edited by Aussie2U; 17th September 2001 at 06:29.
My father keeps complimenting the brake system on the M5 and I cannot do anything but to agree with him, the brake system really bites and if you misjudge a stop sign or traffic light, it will definitly make you stop on the stop sign line.
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Excellent example!!
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