ABC – Ammo, Brakes, and the C

While home to visit my son last weekend and shoot the heck out of all my guns to stress them and see what happened (lots of ammo, lots of guns, lots of misfires, missfeeds, bolt-overs, and failures to feed) I learned about my ammo, my guns, and my C.

Firearms Lessons – There’s nothing wrong with steel cased ammo in my inventory, it's some of the magazines that suck. Run ‘em wet - M1 5w-40 is an awesome lube, and my .45 needs lubed worst of all.

Car Stuff - The C will not crumple into a heap driving in grassy fields, it plows through weeds, it’s stable while driving fast on gravel, and it’s great around twisty back road blacktop.

I mentioned in another thread that I was bummed because the C and it’s stability control would not let me whiz around gravel road corners in a slide like some fancy rally car driver. I’m still a little bummed about it, but the fast maneuver I was required to do last night, and the way the C responded, has very much lessened my discontent.

Cruising home about 65-ish. Traffic cleared in front of me by one car and left multiple car lengths clear. I accelerated to fill in the gap and get on up behind the next car(s). I don’t travel real close, so I wasn’t like I couldn’t stand the empty space.

Red Truck Guy was looking somewhere else and didn’t see my bright orange car coming up beside him on the right . He comes over into my lane pretty fast…my reflexes yank the wheel and send me over into the shoulder in about a billionth of a second. Fortunately the shoulder was clear and I didn’t go into the 6-8” dropoff to the dirt.

During this extreme maneuver, the stability control woke up and braked the rear passenger brake hard enough to break traction. It brought the C under complete control in quick order. The move back over into the lane was uneventful.

It could have been very unpleasant with that short of a wheel base and being kind of top heavy. It was the most violent lane change I’ve ever been required to do, yet the stability control was right on top of it.

I’m thinking the winter driving might not be as exciting this season as it could be, but perhaps that isn’t all that bad.