Hello all,
Looking for a nice bit of roadway to get in a little practice time?
How about telling us about your favorite clover leaf exit ramp experiences.
I'm not condoning the use of our public roadways for racing practice but I'm not condemning it either.
My fave CCCLC is about 3 miles from my house. You can enter it from any direction but I enter it from traveling on route 495 north in Littleton MA. My wife Sara actually discovered this one so I have to give her the credit. It goes like this: 495 north to route 2 west to 495 south to route 2 east to 495 north to route 2 west and repeat repeat repeat. Fun. Let me know your lines through it and if you know of any others.
Interstate 90 and Route 53 interchange in Schaumburg, Illinois. I first did this on accident taking the eastbound ramp for 90, instead of the exit for Higgins just after. So...around we go. Glad I made that mistake in the FR-S.
A really long time ago I lived in NJ, near the intersection of I80, US46, and NJ23. There was a challenging 1.1mile circuit through it that saw many laps with my A-H 100/4! I was through there recently and there has been an alteration, and you cannot lap it now
I'm excited that roundabouts have started appearing in my area. I usually go around one extra time compared to what I would actually need to do. Not even speeding, just enjoying the G-forces at a reasonable pace.
They're building roundabouts here now. There are two of them, more in the plans.
One of them is on my way in or out of the county, when I'm usually driving my miata on my autocross tires.
It's the most fun when someone is tailgating me going into the circle.
Hey Appleseed
Do you find that most exit ramps work best as double apexes?
every day coming home from work I exit 4 southbound onto 60. 270 degrees of right, short straight, quick right and then left before merging. It's all new asphalt and a fun little zip in my day.
165 on I-65 north every night is pretty good.
Also if you catch it at an odd hour with no traffic, the on ramp onto I65 north at exit 28.
In reply to carlsrf13 :
Hard to say. Most of the time in that area, I'm simply trying not to get creamed.
I haven't tried and I'm not going to, but you can set up Harry's Lap Timer for an auto-x/custom course...which of course would be your cloverleaf.
So it's conceivable you could get some good data (or evidence) as you improve (or kill a bus load of nuns).
Google maps got confused once and locked my friend and I into the CL on I74/I95 in NC. We realized what happened but still did multiple trips around it in a 2003 Yukon XL Denali.
My commute doesn't include any interesting curves, but I occasionally get to traverse this sweeper, I-4 N onto SR 44 W into DeLand.
It's Florida, most roads are flat and straight.
OK Just so you all know I'm not advocating for unsafe road driving. There is no substitute for track days at your local road courses.
A few things to keep in mind. This is an 8/10ths kind of driving. You should not be breaking the rear end loose, Not even close.
The ramp blend lines are the track limits. No drifting out into the active lanes and taking out nuns in vans.
In reply to carlsrf13 :
I took a friend for a ride in my ES Miata last week. As I described it to him, on the street I don't want to get into a situation where I can't change my mind.
Not my absolute favorite local one, but it's literally 3 minutes from the new house, so it will be my new repair test course because I can get on and off without actually getting on the interstate.
I'm not saying that my record for a dead stop at the light to the merge on the I-71S onramp at W.150th in Cleveland was 90mph, but I will say that it was 35F and raining at the time (turbo weather!) and the AWD in the Volvo is godlike.
(It's a lefthand turn onto an uphill curve that gets very light on top. My record in the RX-7 is 65 (in the dry) and it involves countersteering when the rear gets light over the crest)
Pushing it on the street can burn you. Sometimes you'll get a surprise, so you've got to hope for luck.
Last year, after filling the tank in my newly purchased 99 Miata sport, I turned left at the traffic light and hammered the shift into second as I straightened out. I'd been doing this exactly the same way in the same spot in my 01 Miata sport for a year. It would bark the tires and step the rear end over a couple of inches...fun!
The 99 instantly spun about 400 degrees of rotation, so hard it never left it's lane. The lucky part was that there was no surrounding traffic, no cops around, and because I didn't leave my lane, I didn't hit the curb. My autocross experience didn't save me from the spin, but "in a spin, both feet in" probably saved me from hitting the curb.
There could have been sand or oil on the pavement, but not likely since there was tire marks there when I went by the next day.
A 99 sport with a stiff front bar on Koni's is going to let go a lot faster than an 01 with stock replacement Sensens and stock bars. I almost really found out the hard way.
Be careful out there.
In reply to Floating Doc :
When I used to own a Subaru (GL 4x4 Wagon y0), and was really sleep deprived to the point of random narcolepsy, I once woke up sideways on an interchange at 50mph. I apparently fell asleep, lifted, the car got sideways which woke me up, I instinctively (at 20 years old!) matted the throttle to power out of the slide, and I was WIDE AWAKE the rest of the drive.
Cloverleaves are awful hard on left side tires, though.
I love the northbound onramp from I189 onto I89 in South Burlington, Vermont. Used to use it for testing when I worked at the local VW dealer. Corrados were fun through there.
