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RE: Fly-off Emergency Brake

To: bschooler@uhd2.uhd.com, mgs@autox.team.net
Subject: RE: Fly-off Emergency Brake
From: Paul Hunt <on76@dial.pipex.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 96 20:29:10 GMT
>Amusing anecdote follows.  Well, fairly amusing.  Anyway, it's an
>anecdote......upon arrival in London for a tour of duty with the 
>USAF I was eager to begin the driving experience.  I paid particular
>attention to how the locals did things, but the one thing that had 
>me puzzled for awhile was the noise that occurred every time I came 
>to a stop at a traffic light or stop sign. Finally figured it out.
>Standard procedure in England is to apply the hand brake whenever
>stopped at traffic light/stop sign.  The noise was the ratcheting
>sound from everybody else's handbrake!  I quickly realized that with
>the majority of autos having manual transmissions, this was a good,
>common sense procedure and adopted it.  From there it was an easy
>transition to properly starting from a stop on an incline with a
>manual transmission car, holding the car stationary as you slowly
>released the clutch, disengaging the hand brake just as the clutch
>began taking up the load.  Watching people in this country take off
>from a red light, on a upgrade, in a manual still gets my goat as 
>they roll backwards until the clutch engages.

Those us is with a sensitive disposition soften the 'ratcheting' by 
partly holding in the button while pulling up the lever.  My daughter 
got a helluva rollicking on her first driving lesson for not doing 
this - but it wasn't me but a pukka driving school!




PaulH
73 Roadster (HD&H)
75 V8 (DD)


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