Wheel eating monster potholes

[turbocad6]

OK, I'm sure that many new yorkers are aware of the crappy roads we have here & all the horrible potholes we wind up with every winter. the belt parkway is particularly notorious for this. what really annoys me is that they do make a half assed attempt to try and fix them, hell in the past few weeks I've sat in bumper to bumper crap several times while they close off 2 lanes for the pothole crews to "fix" them, yeah right. so how this works is they get about 15 guys all on union overtime pay to stand around & watch maybe one guy actually shovel some black tar into the holes... maybe one guy is holding a flag... tax dollars put to use at it's finest there... but then, a few day's later, not only are the potholes still there, but the highway is also now riddled with big chunks of black tar pieces of road that have been ejected from the potholes they just "fixed"!!! what a mess...

today it is snowing pretty heavy in NY, & the belt parkway is such a mess... I even was just talking to one of my delivery drivers & he told me that his friend just came in from far rockaway... the belt was so bad that he winded up just getting off & taking the local streets.... it's almost like traveling through a war zone with huge mortar holes all over the place... no lane can escape it & it is almost impossible to see & avoid every one, especially in heavy snow & traffic full of less than great drivers to begin with. I've seen no less than 4 cars on the side of the road this morning with flats... I'm talking stock wheel cars... an acura, a jetta, a BMW & a Benz, all with stock wheels...

I blasted so many giant potholes today at high speeds that I'm amazed that my super low pro's have no issue. each bone jarring blast I kept expecting the tpms to start beeping at me... it was so bad that I even considered getting off & traveling local too, but that would have turned a 25 minute commute into over an hour & i sure did not have the patience for that this morning, especially in this weather, so I just continued... I'm convinced that the faster you travel the less severe the impact though... the combination of a good forged wheel & a good tire I guess makes all the difference. I guarantee that heavy cast 22's with a 30 series tire would not survive this kind of pounding unscathed...


so I'm just wondering, how many other places have to deal with monster potholes every winter? I'm imagining it can't be just a ny thing... man, you Cali boys don't know how good you have it when it comes to roads at least think now I'm going to have to take my fx off the road again for a few days till this latest mess blows over again :tears: I hate driving anything but the fx

 

[Daddyx]

Same damn thing here in Minnesota! With the temps swinging from -20 to 40 their crappy patches last a week at best. They are so bad on some roads you can't even drive around them. Usually in the spring some of the highways and interstates get shut down because the roads buckle so bad you loose your car in a hole!

 

[gto]

john, is this all about you?

YouTube- Falling Down: "The Rocket Launcher"

 

[theRAMSTA]

Tires are cheaper to replace then dented rims, which is the typical outcome with aftermarket wheels. One of the best things about moving out of Brooklyn, NY into suburban NJ is less potholes to navigate (the other benefits are more parking, more property, and more peace and quiet). What Jersey drivers need to avoid are railroad tracks which are more like metal speedbumps that you can't go around. I feel that the best way to drive over them is to increase your speed rather than slow down. When braking really hard you end up putting a lot more weight on the front tires which only increases the impact. By accelerating over them, most of the hit gets absorbed by the shocks. The other alternative is to come to a complete stop and gently roll over them, but then you risk get shot at by road ragers or rear ended by the driving-challenged.

 

[turbocad6]

haha, dave, I would never want to actually hurt anyone because they drive like an idiot, but sometimes I do wish I could just blow there friggin cars up & just drive through them when they get in the left lane & then cruise at crawling speed in this mess. if you can't drive stay the f#%* home :k: I love when they just waltz into your lane for no reason while your really moving, almost kill you, & there still just totally oblivious to everything & cruise at a crawl... stepping on the brakes& swerving each & every time they hit some standing water... but STILL won't get the hell out of the left lane! drives me nuts...

people tell me I'm an agressive driver, but I wouldn't have to be if everyone just stayed the hell out of my way! :tonguey: it's not the agressive drivers that cause road rage, it's the morons who are totally oblivious to there surroundings & drive like there the only person on the road & no one else matters... it's only worse in this kind of weather... a rocket launcher in the grille would be cool, but probably illegal & then also theres the chance someone could get hurt too... if it weren't for those facts then that would be a cool mod though for sure

 

[Chedman13]

I guarantee that heavy cast 22's with a 30 series tire would not survive this kind of pounding unscathed...

I hear you John. Being in Chicago, you see some gigantic pot holes. Throw in how much salt they put on the roads (for good reason), My dedicated 20" winter set on a 40 series tire, with 36 PSI all around does the trick. My suspension takes a beating no doubt, but I use the higher PSI as when you get to really cold temps, the resting PSI is 32 PSI and I think I'd rather have my suspension take a beating vs a dent in my wheel at this time being.

Now switching out after the temp goes above 45 degrees, I quickly switch to my summer set, but still, massive pot holes all around. 22" and 40 series, with 38 PSI cold does the trick for me in the non-winter months.

Maybe you should get a 10" Toyota Corolla wheel and throw a 1,000 series tires on there

 

[turbocad6]

I'm running like 37psi cold, ~40psi at operating temperatures... been holding up so far no problem

---------- Post added at 04:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:30 PM ----------

boring snow day, I just got this from the daily news...

Belt Parkway bridges riddled with potholes, motorists say

BY Erin Durkin
DAILY NEWS WRITER
Thursday, May 14th 2009, 6:25 PM


Potholes on two Belt Parkway bridges are so bad they slow traffic to a standstill and cause frequent flat tires, drivers charge.
"It's like the craters of the moon," said Annette Cordina, 61, of Bay Ridge, who said she has counted 20 potholes on the Mill Basin Bridge and 10 more on the Paerdegat Basin Bridge, some as large as 3 feet in diameter.
Cordina, 61, a retired social worker, said traffic tieups caused by the bumpy bridges add up to 45 minutes to the trips she makes to Long Island several times a week to care for an elderly aunt.
"You can't drive over that bridge going more than five miles an hour because it's so bad," she said.
"Saturday I was on there and the parkway was backed up almost all the way into Nassau County ... it was bumper-to-bumper traffic."
She said she got a flat tire crossing the Mill Basin Bridge three weeks ago - and has seen plenty of other drivers on the side of the road with flats.
"It's very dangerous," she said. "It's really pretty awful to have a major thoroughfare like that be in such poor condition..As much taxes as we pay, we can't even get good roads to drive on."
City Transportation Department spokesman Scott Gastel said all seven bridges on the Belt Parkway, including the Mill Basin and Paerdegat Basin, are slated for major reconstruction projects beginning later this year.
"In the meantime, we continue to make roadway pothole repairs as necessary," he said.
Construction will start late this summer on the Paerdegat Basin Bridge and next year on the Mill Basin Bridge, with both projects scheduled to wrap up in 2014.
A Transportation Department plan has conceded all city bridges are in "substandard condition" and predicted rebuilding them will reduce accidents on that section of the Belt Parkway by 48%.
For Beverly Middleton, 52, of Bay Ridge, that can't come soon enough.
"In the last three or four years, it's gotten really bad," she said. "They're always working on it, but there seems to be no improvement.
"When you get to that drawbridge, you just have to stop. No one can do 55 across it if you want your life."


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2009/05/15/2009-05-15_belt_parkway_riddled_with_potholes_motorists_say.html#ixzz0gaCyVO9X

that overpass there talking about is absolutely crazy & has been for years, just gets worse & worse as they patch it & patch it & yeah, many have to slow down to like 15mph to not have there car hop & spin out of control... staying in one lane is a challenge. my friend in his 350z claims he has to slow to like 5mph in that spot the fx used to do the same, the rear would skitter left & right & not be so controllable, I hated that section because no mater how good of a driver you are it is still very hard to control many cars in that section. this section was my test bed for fixing the rear suspension on my fx. stock it would walk side to side even going slow through there, but now, I can take it at 50, 60 or more no problem... just gotta watch out for the other cars that can't seem to stay in there own lane even going slow though... the roads are so bad that if you don't have a good suspension it can be a hairy drive just trying to stay in one lane

 

[pmanliu]

i gotta show you some pictures of the roads here in ithaca new york. My school is so gothic that we have those very annoying brick roads where if you go faster than 15mph on them, your whole car shakes like a beast and its as if your riding over an ocean of potholes. Combine that with huge inclines that suddenly flatten out so sudden that ive been able to scrap the front and rear of the fx on these when i first came here

of course its less damaging than a deep pothole, but still a nuisance

 

[turbocad6]

got this from the NY Times:

January 5, 2009, 6:35 pm
Back in Town, Mayor Declares ‘Pothole Blitz’

By SEWELL CHANOn Sunday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was in Sderot, Israel, assailing the assault on the town by Hamas rockets. And on Monday, he was in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, filling a pothole.
Such is the life of a big-city mayor in a town where politics span the geopolitical and the provincial.
Mr. Bloomberg joined the city’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, to fill a pothole at Jerome Avenue and Avenue Z in Sheepshead Bay. Community Board 15, which includes the neighborhood, had the most reported potholes in the Brooklyn, with 1,055 filled in the last year.
City Hall declared that its “winter pothole blitz” had begun, with 40 Transportation Department crews filling potholes across the five boroughs: 20,805 in the last five weeks, and more than 80,000 over the last six months. Some 1,000 lane miles are to be paved by the end of the fiscal year on June 30 — the most in seven years.
“We are identifying potholes faster than ever before and filling them faster than ever — typically in less than three days,” the mayor said. “But the best defense against potholes is a good offense of paving streets, and we are having our best year yet in street paving.”
The “blitz” is being carried out through the 311 hot line and the Scout (Street Conditions Observation Unit) program, which consists of inspectors who drive every street once a month and report on conditions that negatively affect quality of life. The teams reported 10,437 potholes last year.
City Hall also said that the city uses 40 percent recycled asphalt product, or RAP, to repair potholes. The product is produced at a plant on Hamilton Avenue in Brooklyn.

 

[tchuck]

There is a benefit to going faster over pot holes, but it's mostly your back, not your wheels that see the benefit.
There are two reasons for the perceived benefit:
First, the angle at which your wheel hits the trailing edge of the hole. As the wheel's velocity increases, the momentum of the wheel causes it to fly off the leading edge of the hole at an angle the increases along with your speed (from 90 up to <180 degrees). The greater the angle, the less time the wheel has to drop into the hole before it hits the trailing edge, so it's as if the hole itself were more shallow than it really is. In this case the wheel is hitting an obstacle that is virtually smaller, but it's hitting the obstacle faster as well...
Second, the rotation of the tire (when traveling forward) has a tendency to deflect the force of impact downward, which in turn pushes the wheel assembly up instead of backward as the wheel climbs back out of the hole. As the rotational speed increases, so does this effect.
With RR tracks, much like speed bumps, the rotational deflection effect still occurs, but the "momentum advantage" is in fact reversed due to the wheels tendency to continue moving forward "through" the obstacle. Ie, the bump never gets "smaller" as you drive faster, but the force of impact still increases along with the speed.
Slowing down is definitely the best way to keep from damaging your wheels. It may feel like the impact is reduced as speed is increased but that is because the shocks and springs are being forced into doing a better job of dampening the blow before it reaches the cab.

 

[gto]

I bet you miss your caddy sometimes. It's like, 'what bumps?'

 

[turbocad6]

this is part of my pothole battling suspension mods:

can't tell you what a difference in stability it has made...

 

[gto]

There is a benefit to going faster over pot holes, but it's mostly your back, not your wheels that see the benefit.
There are two reasons for the perceived benefit:
First, the angle at which your wheel hits the trailing edge of the hole. As the wheel's velocity increases, the momentum of the wheel causes it to fly off the leading edge of the hole at an angle the increases along with your speed (from 90 up to <180 degrees). The greater the angle, the less time the wheel has to drop into the hole before it hits the trailing edge, so it's as if the hole itself were more shallow than it really is. In this case the wheel is hitting an obstacle that is virtually smaller, but it's hitting the obstacle faster as well...
Second, the rotation of the tire (when traveling forward) has a tendency to deflect the force of impact downward, which in turn pushes the wheel assembly up instead of backward as the wheel climbs back out of the hole. As the rotational speed increases, so does this effect.
With RR tracks, much like speed bumps, the rotational deflection effect still occurs, but the "momentum advantage" is in fact reversed due to the wheels tendency to continue moving forward "through" the obstacle. Ie, the bump never gets "smaller" as you drive faster, but the force of impact still increases along with the speed.
Slowing down is definitely the best way to keep from damaging your wheels. It may feel like the impact is reduced as speed is increased but that is because the shocks and springs are being forced into doing a better job of dampening the blow before it reaches the cab.

lol! I bet you worked on the Apollo project!
Always gettin scientific.
You got a pocket protector too?

 

[turbocad6]

the caddy was way more comfortable in the pothole fields, especially with a relatively tall tire but it too had the problem of being unstable & sketchy in the rough stuff, wallowed around like a friggin caddy... now I've got the fx suspension tuned very well to handle even the worse stuff & stay 100% straight though even the worse of them though... I tried everything from airshocks to extra dampening, only the increase in springrate really made the most difference there as far as stability...

 

[gto]

simple answer. Move out her to Cali.
re. soft, it never slows the cabbies in the city. so dunno . . oh ya, those drivers are unstable too

 

[tchuck]

lol! I bet you worked on the Apollo project!
Always gettin scientific.
You got a pocket protector too?

Close, and no I don't have a pocket protector. We use computers and calculators now. :nerd:



---------- Post added at 01:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:41 PM ----------

this is part of my pothole battling suspension mods:

can't tell you what a difference in stability it has made...

That is bad ass!

 

[turbocad6]

I think the stock setup sucks. just having the rearmost suspension arm sprung while just the front rear arm was dampened is what makes the fx so sketchy out back in the rough stuff. I do plan on adding another dampener(shock) on the rear sprung arm to complete the mod, but just the increase in overall sping rate, combined with both arms being sprung alone has made a huge huge difference...

---------- Post added at 04:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:48 PM ----------

jeez, another rocket scientist... literally that's def cool

 

[ghettojiggalo]

we got pothole probs in cali too, its city dependent tho, nice hoods get potholes fixed in an eyeblink but no1 cares about the shitty hoods.

i've seen city transportation workers sunbathe for hrs at a local park while supposedly working on projects, its appalling.

 

[StuLax18]

We never had potholes in Dallas as much as man hole covers that were sunk into the road, I guess they repaved the road sometime and just had to leave that part empty. I remember a few years they started a huge repavement of potholes, and you were supposed to call the city every time you saw one.

 

[gto]

guess I'm lucky. No pots in my hood