How fast to flip a car

Try to place the heaviest cargo low on the floor and as far from the tailgate and as close to the center of the vehicle as possible. Watch your speed. Speed makes a vehicle's tendencies to roll over more severe, and it also makes more demands on a driver's attention and skill. About 40 percent of fatal rollovers involve excessive speed, the government reports. Beware on country roads. Almost three-quarters of fatal rollovers occur in rural areas on roads where the speed limit is 55 mph or more.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, those roads tended to be undivided highways without barriers. The tests score rollover propensity in part by putting vehicles through a handling maneuver called a fishhook, a quick left-right turn, at increasing speeds from 35 to 50 mph. This simulates a driver overcorrecting the vehicle's steering, something that can happen in an emergency.

If the vehicle lifts two wheels off the ground it's considered a "tip-up" and testing stops. If the vehicle slides out or gets through the test without incident at 50 mph, it passes. Before , NHTSA rated rollover propensity with a static non-moving measurement of a vehicle's shape and weight distribution. Called the Static Stability Factor SSF , it's derived from a formula that compares a vehicle's track width with its center of gravity height. But starting with models, NHTSA added the dynamic vehicle in motion test, and the agency now uses those results to augment its rollover ratings.

So far, no car or minivan has tipped up. In fact, NHTSA conducts on-road rollover testing on only two sedans per year and assigns star ratings to cars based on their SSF alone, as it did with and earlier models.

The scores. Five stars represents rollover likelihood in a single-vehicle crash at 10 percent or less; one star predicts a rollover likelihood of 40 percent or more. The SSFs underlying the star ratings vary from about 1.

The higher that number, the better. SUVs usually measure out at 1. What the results mean. Many SUVs have tipped up in NHTSA's testing—understandable since the dynamic test is designed to provoke a tip-up if a steering maneuver alone can produce one. What is surprising is that a tip-up doesn't affect the star rating much.

That's because the government's rollover ratings give much more weight to the static measurement than to the on-road test. Consumer Reports takes the position that if a vehicle can tip up in a steering maneuver, without impacting anything else first, then that's a good reason to look for a less tip-prone alternative. NHTSA's rollover ratings can be found at www. For specific information about a vehicle's star rating, click on "Search 5-Star Safety Ratings," then select the vehicle class, such as SUV, then its year, then the make and model.

Scroll down to the heading Rollover, and a chart there will tell you whether the vehicle tipped under Dynamic Test Result , and also its likelihood of rollover expressed as an exact percentage rather than a star.

You can also see lists of all tested vehicles within a class passenger car, SUV, etc. It might come as a surprise, but the government doesn't have any standards that involve rolling a vehicle over.

Instead, it runs a public-education program that rates rollover propensity. But that's not the same as a performance standard, which would require some level of occupant protection when a rollover happens.

Roof integrity is certainly important. A collapsing roof can kill or injure people no matter how well they are otherwise restrained. NHTSA has estimated that a collapsing roof kills about and injures about people every year, even though they were belted in. The roof-crush regulation was finally updated, after many years of deliberation, in That was the first significant update in 38 years. The mandatory three-year phase-in period starts with vehicles manufactured in September, This rule change could represent a significant safety improvement, but some safety advocates say the proposal doesn't go far enough.

Background on rollover-resistance standard. The old "roof crush" requirement was promulgated in It required automakers to subject a sample of every model to a roof-crush test before it could be sold. In that test a stationary vehicle had a weight pressed against one edge of its roof. The roof had to withstand a force equivalent to 1. Revised roof-crush rules. This will tell you whether the car has been in any accidents, what kind of work has been done on it, and how many previous owners it has had.

You should also be sure to get a bill of sale for any car you buy. The most important thing you can do when purchasing a used car for flipping is to test drive it. Chances are, whoever is buying the car after you will want to test drive it as well, so this is a chance for you to find any issues. When test driving a vehicle, take note of any major issues with acceleration, braking, or steering. These are going to be the most expensive areas of the vehicle to fix.

Knowing whether you are dealing with any problems with these functions will help you decide whether the car is worth trying to repair and flip or if the cost will be a deal-breaker. The key to a successful car flipping business is to buy used cars that are undervalued. The further below the Kelley Blue Book price a vehicle is, the higher your profit margin will be when you sell it.

There are many places where you can find undervalued cars with varying degrees of repairs that need to be made. Auto auctions are a great place to find cars that are well below the standard asking price. The cars sold at public auctions are usually going to be either government-owned vehicles or cars that have been repossessed.

Because of this, they will usually be far below the market value and perfect for flipping. Finding a good car at an auto auction takes some skill and a good deal of experience. Make sure you take a look at what is being offered before you go. Many auctions will list the cars in advance online. Also, you may need to pay for a vehicle in cash, so make sure that you are prepared to do that. Craigslist is an online marketplace that is available in most cities in the United States.

People sell all kinds of items on Craigslist and their automobile section is usually full of undervalued cars. As with any used car sale from a private seller, make sure you do your due diligence and get a vehicle history report as well as a thorough visual inspection before buying.

Plus, you have the feedback function of eBay to help ensure that you are dealing with reputable sellers. While it may seem outdated, newspaper classified ads are a perfect place for finding undervalued vehicles. Newspaper classifieds sellers tend to skew older and many times people are just trying to get rid of cars that they no longer have any use for.

This means you are much more likely to find vehicles that are in good shape for less than their actual value. Like Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace is a regional online listing for used cars and other items. One of the benefits of Facebook Marketplace is that you can see the profiles of people who are selling vehicles.

Once you have purchased your first car for flipping, there are a few things you should do to get it ready. If there are no significant issues that you can detect, at the very least you can get it looking as showroom-ready as possible. This can let you know if there are any hidden issues that could prevent you from selling the car and also help you price it accordingly. If there are repairs that need to happen, make sure you get them done before you list the car. Prioritize repairs as much as you can.

The important thing is that you make any repairs that you need to list the car as honestly as possible. Yeah, I know, it's a dumb question. But it's been on my mind for a few hours, and I know I'm not going to let go of it until I find out. I saw a pretty bad accident tonight on my way back to my hotel, with one car completely upside down.

What struck me as odd was that this was on a street with a relatively low speed limit 30 MPH , a perfectly straight, flat stretch of road where cars just don't really go all that fast, and no nearby intersections.

Looking at that piece of road, I just couldn't reconcile the physics in my mind - you had two cars, traveling in the same direction on a flat, straight street, going maybe 40 MPH at the most, and somehow they managed to come into contact in such a way as to cause one to flip over. I could see it if there was an intersection where one of them could have T-boned the other, or a curve, but I couldn't figure out how a car could flip from apparently being sideswiped at such a low speed.

Does this sound unusual to anyone else, or am I just being dense here? Not very fast depending on the car. Turned too fast tires got traction. Bang on his side. I recall a HS buddy flipping his brand new turbo'ed Chevy Corvair at 15 mph on dry pavement. I've seen a BMW model flipped at 35 mph in an abrupt maneuver to avoid a load of steel pipe dropped off a semi-trailer in front of him.

I was in a car next behind him and had to swerve to miss him and the pipe Just input "low speed car flip" on YouTube and see how easy it is for idiots that can't drive to flip a car at less than 20 mph.

They could have clipped each other forcing the other car to flip or one changed lanes into the others lanes and swerved hence the flipping of the car. Cars with a high center of gravity don't need much speed to flip over in the right conditions.