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stevew

resident influencer
Sep 21, 2001
41,179
10,114
^
surprised there is not one gif of the lady catching the broken bat to the head at the A's/Red Sox game...
 

atrokz

Turbo Monkey
Mar 14, 2002
1,552
77
teedotohdot
This guy was blasted by so many racecar builders for building what essentially amounted to a road race cage at the *minimum* requirements. It was pretty amateur hour according to these guys, and a quick look at his build and the cage supports that. FIA WRC cages don't let body panels fly off like his did, and if you watch the whole thing the passenger's head actually exits the cage at one point. The stupid design has a single diagonal on the roof (wtf) and a huge lack of gusseting and triangulation. The cage was also highly deformed. He was extremely lucky to be alive. The owner is incredibly arrogant and while admitting he's going to 'reevaluate' his design and make changes he is adamant his work was fine because they guys survived. Guys who built actual WRC cages were ripping him apart.
 

atrokz

Turbo Monkey
Mar 14, 2002
1,552
77
teedotohdot
QUOTE="IH8Rice, post: 4064273, member: 30216"]maybe it got deformed from nearly plummeting to his death a few thousand feet below the road?

[/QUOTE]


Cages are supposed to deform to a certain degree. They are designed in CAD and FEA is performed on them to achieve the desired results. In this case, the deformation is enough that the roof lowers to helmet level. It didn't deform that much to 'serve' anything. The deformation is also exaggerated due to there being no braces or gusseting and the top diagonal bar isn't supported the way they should be. The deformation didn't 'serve to absorb energy' as it was beyond that. This has been discussed by many actual cage builders, The cage was built to NASA road racing, not NASA rally spec. Think about that for a few seconds. The car didn't plummet a few thousand feet. It fell a good amount and rolled quite a bit, but it didn't come to a dead stop instantly, or roll into trees, the same way rally cars do. Those ones have the cages that actually hold up to this sort of thing. Take a gander at a WRC or NASA rally cage at some point, or watch similar accidents where a rally cage is used to get the idea. This car was built to the minimum *road* racing specifications then raced where a WRC style cage should have been used, because the owner was trying to go as light as possible and said pikes peak was a road race not a rally. Technically he was correct, and the cage was very well built for what it was (road racing), as the welds didn't fail (although the cage separated from the floor in places because they didn't seam weld the chassis like they would have for a WRC car), but the outcome could have been much worse for the passenger who was extremely lucky.

Pikes peak regulations are not in line with the modern racing world, where similar crashes have happened many times (youtube) without cars disintegrating. This is why a weaker cage was allowed.

Somebody already on the Evo forum needs to speak up, the idiot guy is still bragging what a great job he did

Somebody (already on the wank forum) explain to that imbecile that that wasn't that bad of a roll, and so what about his stupid engineering degree---is he working as an engineer? Evidently not , he seems to have some Turnerz shop. or portrays himself to be a Tunerz.

Anybody making a 500 hp car who does not strengthen the shell via stitch welding and integrate the cage and the shell to be a unit for a car like that is a flat, irredeemable moron and he should be exposed for the idiot he is to prevent future catastrophes
---IF a car should hit something solid rather than skipping down a hill with glancing blows..and missing all the nasty rocks..
That fool must not have much imagination or he maybe knows how horrible he blew it and is just trying to brazen it out.

(Spoke today with a real automotive engineer at Chrysler today who I'm doing some heads and forged pistons for and he had seen this and he agreed about the downhill is glancing business and that the car was lucky to not hit anything and agreed emphatically about the insanity of not tieing the cage to shell in 20-25 points, and used my phrase 'The sum of the parts is stronger than the individual elements'.)

Amazing the arrogance.


John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
It's strange, looking at the the Youtube comments and the comments on that build thread the car builder is being lauded as some genius cage builder. The cage isn't bad but it's not that great. Pretty minimal and and pretty poor fit and the door bars are a bit sketchy. Obviously it was good enough to do the job and keep the occupants safe, though, and that's the main thing. I think they were lucky there were no trees to hit. But Dave Kern gives some good advice early in the thread about adding some A pillar bars and the guy just blows it off. Lightweight at all costs seems to be his motto. The cage meets the minimum PPIHC rules so why make it any stronger and slow the car down is his attitude. It's really quite prophetic around page 6, 7, 8 or so. Someone even links the video to Bobby Regester's crash in the exact same spot from last year.- Doivi Clarkinen
davek said:
Speaking to Kevin: Your cage looks stronger than mine for side impacts (read: another car crashing into you at the track), but I'd much rather roll over in my car. As others have said, it's all up to you guys to decide what's safe enough...I just think with zero experience at rally/hillclimb and a driver with what sounds like minimal high speed experience, listening to some folks with knowledge of such things is a smarter way to go rather than spouting off about how you've built your safety gear to the absolute minimum spec. Sure those extra 15 lbs might cost you what 2 seconds over the whole race course? IMO, not worth the tradeoff.
Also, I saw Yuri's busted up helmet, the busted up car, and the incar video after the event. It was pure luck they survived.

Jason McDaniel
Rally Car:
1963 SAAB Historic, 1995 Impreza Open Light totaled at WRC Mexico, 2005 STi Pikes Peak winner
It failed because the passenger compartment failed to prevent deformation.

It failed because one of the occupants seats folded back and broke off its "mount".

It failed because it shed its body panels allowing objects outside the car to intrude into the passenger compartment.

It failed because BOTH occupants were not provided the same protection.

Using the fact these two survived as a gauge of success or failure is absurd. Jari and Mika's crash in Portugal is a perfect example of a successful safety SYSTEM. "Nascar bars" are designed to keep another car from ending up on the occupants lap. The door bars in a FIA cage prevent the car from folding up like a taco from side, front and bottom impacts. Not much side protection but that's a different topic, the Nascar bars provide superior protection to side impacts than the X bars we have in FIA cages. Ideal would be both types. The nascar bar would prevent the side from folding in (when you hit a tree) and the X keeps the bottom of the cage turning into a trapizoid . The FIA cages are intended to keep the area around the occupants from collapsing in. This ass hats cage FAILED to do this.

The cage looks impressive if you haven't been around many cages. Pure arrogant amateur hour by a mid 20s 'engineer' (who wasn't actually a PEng mind you) who's racing experience was FSAE and crushing cones in parking lots.
 
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