build what you can't buy (Page 2 of 2)

psychoboy; To most people here, your nickname says it all. While I'm not totally convinced they are absolutely correct, I know that your experience may cloud sound judgement and believe the best laid plans of mice and men...

you may start to feel where I'm going with this. Allow me to play devil's advocate, if you will...

1) the ball, taper and fixture itself will probably be fine. the weld, will probably be fine. I believe because of the design, as how the part is replaceable (via threaded shaft) will be the weakpoint and ultimate undoing. My theory is that the threaded shaft will first bend(may deflect or snap) then the threads will shear off because they are then encountering a force far beyond what they were designed for.

2) Autocrossing the car will indeed test the design, but not to a level that would be equivalent to Lemons. An Autocross rarely, or even never gets to the same level of speed most of these races are getting to. At Nelson Ledges, many cars were seeing triple digits at the end of the back straight. It will be impossible to generate a lateral load (brief or shock) equivalent to needing to turn at those speeds. You may be aware of how to use the brakes to prepare the car, but this being a race environment, with door to door racing, it is quite possible to briefly overstep that safety zone from which you can safely slow the car for that corner. could be you, could be a team member. Point is, that sudden need to turn late while braking would generate a shock load sufficiently over an Autocross. Depending on the track and location, the sudden suspension change can put the car off balance, and put it into a violent, nearly end-over-end car roll, which then can easily traverse most club-level race track safety barriers. on the other side, could very well be a paddock with lounging or wrenching Lemons teams/spectators, with their eyes engaged elsewhere. Instant numerous injury count. your cage, properly mounted harness, and race gear will likely minimize your injuries, but what about them? Unlikely, yes, impossible, no.

3) Another factor an autocross doesn't cover, is the contact factor. alert and aware as you may be, you're going to be on a track with newbie racers, that may be too focused to note your presence in a turn or a line-change on a straight. they could drive right into your front wheel wells, and cause that bolt to shear right off. you will only, at best, be able to test for a small fraction of the forces involved in that sort of contact, but the bottom line is this: Manufacturers design those control arms so that when/if contact like that with i described occurs, it distributes the forces across a larger surface area that effectively mitigates a catastrophic failure. At worst, the OEM design deforms, drastically lowering your speed but instead of complete loss of steering, just puts a nasty geometry change that can be handled(albeit with high difficulty) allowing a driver to get to the side of the road to await that tow truck you seem to be so eager to come calling, and inhibit everyone else's race fun.

3) Your testing methodology with you or team members is openly disregarding your own safety as well as theirs. Were I your teammate I would be questioning your regard for my safety and perhaps even my choice of teammates. If you're doing the car prep you need to have a thought for safety that is high enough that it may, infact, trump your teammate's own personal regards for their own.

Racing is Dangerous by concept and by execution. Please don't consciously elevate those hazards for the rest of us. Play it safe and over-engineer the hell out of whatever you ultimately do.

LOL -

Like our crap cans with regular suspension have zero chance of chassis failure and wrecking!  Some cars are so rusty that they could fall apart entirely!

Git a grip.  All these are S$*tboxes and not Nascar.

I highly doubt his "fix" is any more dangerous than the cludges present in 3/4 of the Lemons cars out there.  Whine away if you want, but he was just sharing something that most teams would have done and quietly put on the track.

A little "I think that's dangerous and here's why" would go a hell of a lot farther than the "you're a fool, your mom is fat, and this is going to kill every single participant in Lemons history, ever.  It's even going to go back in time and kill Paul Newman, again" that I'm reading here.

Get a grip.  A cludge may be dangerous or it may be just what the engineer ordered.  But realistically a ball joint breaking isn't going to cause an immediate death to everyone involved.  This isn't a movie where obscuring someone's windshield makes the car spin out of control and explode.  I've had strut towers collapse on the freeway and only had one shredded tire and some puckered seat upholstery to show for it.

i'm not sure why you think i'm 'playing around' with a safety item. i'm testing the part in house, i'm testing it in car, and i'll be testing it extensively before we put it on a hot track with other drivers.

again...explain how i'm sort cutting saftey. you are long on rhetoric and painfully short on logic.

you show video of a car losing a rear wheel with little weight over it. please explain how that would compare to a front engine car breaking a lower ball joint.

again, more worthless hyperbolic rhetoric. this doesn't do anything to bolster your case.

you aren't trying to help. you are trying to tell me my idea won't work because of some reason you are unable or unwilling to articulate. that's not help. i'm not even remotely suggesting i know it all, i'm merely suggesting i know enough to base more knowledge on.

I don't think i have all the answers...i'm just pretty sure i've asked most of the questions.

again, i see few cautions from people who appear to have any experience in the matter. that's not very helpful.  if i'm wrong, if some of you are suspension engineers, i'm sure you can answer any of the simple questions i've posed without resorting to foolishness

thanks, i appreciate that.

i'll post videos.

my nickname is a moniker i've been carrying for a long, long time. i came about it quite honestly, and frankly, i feel it suits me pretty well.  that said, i'm willing to think outside the box, and rarely do i fail in my final result. sure, i fail along the way, but that's science.

fair enough, that's the point i find the weakest as well. i've clamped a ball joint in my vise and tired to bend or break it, and i've not succeeded yet (by cheater bar or with a sledge). i'm going to figure out a way to bend it with my hydraulic press, and see what it'll actually put up with.

our autocrosses aren't your standard SCCA parking lot affairs. most of our cars see the top of third or middle of fourth, and that's during the timed stuff. once the timing equipment and the cones go away, the fun runs get damn silly.

i'm not going to be able to test door to door at the autocross, but we might have a HST day at our local roadcourse before our Lemons run.  again, we'll be as tested as possible (and more tested than most Lemons racers, i'll bet).

considering my team members watched me build the arm, and have been around me long enough to know about my experience and abilities, i'm not sure you have enough info to make such a broad statement.

i am, regardless of what the non-engineers on here believe.

if the pic is on the internet, find the address for the pic by itself. it'll usually start with www. and end with .jpg or .gif.  put (img) tags around the link. (brackets, not parenthesis)

(img)www.flickr.com/yourpic.jpg(/img)

Formula SAE, Formula VEE,  Mini Sprints, baja/score,  there's lots of racing classes that use smaller rod ends / heimjoints (not terribly different from these tie-rods) in much more stressful situations.  some of us apparently have experience in these fields....some of us apparently don't.

How do you plan to wire your kill switch?

Next to the fuel fill spout...

I know of an injury and more than one severely damaged cars locally from ball joint failure. I have no idea if your design is sound, but folding under a wheel at speed in a turn can most definitely end badly, and I'd venture probably will end badly.

I also think that just because it works OK at the autocross from, what, 8 minutes of driving time/day doesn't mean that fatigue won't be a problem after 24 hours. Again, I have no idea if this is an issue, but I wouldn't take autocross testing as a seal-of-approval.

Good luck with your project. You obviously didn't get the response you expected. I think what you did was clever, but I also think you got a variety of opinions here that are worth thinking about with due consideration.

you must have missed it:

http://forums.24hoursoflemons.com/viewtopic.php?id=496

considering the design of the suspension will not allow the wheel to fold under the car, the potential concern seems lessened.

the suspension design WILL allow the wheel to cram into the wheelwell (which might be considered 'folding'), but considering the design of the well, (as i've stated) it'll cause the tire to drag to quick stop. the car is a 'rear steer' car, so as the wheel moves back, it'll toe-in, and will likely force the other side to toe-in as well, making for a relatively safe plow stop. (as honda originally designed it)

seal of approval? no. proof of concept? yes.

and...honestly, our autocrosses are not your standard SCCA cone dodging affairs.

on the other hand, i could do what 95% of Lemons drivers do and left the stock ball joint in there....

sloppy fit, rattley noises....obviously safer than other solutions.

thanks, and actually i got exactly the response i expected. a bunch of exaggerated 'dukes of hazzard' physics from people who do not seem to have any experience in the matter, a few reserved opinions of concern based on actual logical possibilities, and a handful of it oughta works from people who are willing to actually think about it.

not unlike every other project i've succeeded at.

oddly enough, tho who vie to be at the front of the line to say 'i told you so' when things go wrong,  can never be found to say 'i guess i was wrong' when things go right.

Are you one of those people that hasn't left the house in 15 years to avoid swine flu, SARS, Mad Cow, rapists, muggers, carbohydrates, space shuttle chunks falling from the sky, and so on and so forth?

Seriously, if you're this concerned about failures involving fully caged, safety-inspected cars on a closed course, I can't imagine the terror you must feel at the prospect of driving on public roads with people who haven't checked their ball joints, tie rod ends, shocks, brakes (pads, rotors, lines, or fluid), tire pressure, CV joints, or pretty much anything other than the radio station since buying the car.