In other automotive news: Man cleaves new Camaro in half...walks away

exalted512

ummmm, welcome to Club Polk?
-Cody

RuSsMaN

Three impacts occur in an auto accident. First, the automobile itself hitting something. Second, the occupants hitting the automobile, seatbelts, airbags, dash, windows, etc. Third, internal organs hitting bone (including the brain). The third is what causes real damage, or death.

Now, apparently in this one, the placement of the pole is key, it could have run straight through the driver - whether the Camaro is safe or not, I don't know, I'm not an engineer - but the issue is whether or not the car is a deformable object, because the drivers and passengers until recently (past 30 years) were the only deformable object on board.

The car took the impact, obviously the driver did not. That, at the end of the day is what is supposed to happen. Lucky, you betcha. I hope he walked STRAIGHT to the nearest news stand or stop and stab and bought a lotto ticket.

Cheers,
Russ

Chadworkz

Thanks Cody!

Even though my first post was the one above, I came here because I am a huge Polk Audio fan, and run pretty much nothing but Polk car audio components (Pioneer head units).

TouchOfEvil

Welcome to Club Polk Chadworkz.
All i'm gonna say about the wreck is holllyyyysheet.

nooshinjohn

Chadworkz wrote: »

nooshinjohn, wow, I have never seen such idiotic ignorance...I swear you are acting like an immature Ford/Mustang lover who absolutely hates Chevrolet/Camaros, and will do/say whatever it takes to try and make them look/seem horrible. Or, you are a hardcore import lover with a hate for all American cars, especially those in the performance category. It is obvious that you are going out of your way trying to destroy the Camaro's reputation. You seriously need to chill...nothing you have said has made and sort of sense or has any fact or truth to it...in fact, you're not even trying to figure out what really happened and the circumstances behind it (nor do you care), you are simply using this thread as a method to *diss* the Camaro.

[Jeeze people, some of you seriously need to use some of the common sense that God gave you.

Didn't think you were going to walk into a dead thread and not face some rebuttal here now, did you?:rolleyes:

First, welcome to Club Polk.

Let me begin by asking what your qualifications are for the following...

1. Crash Analysis. (I rode "shotgun" with my father to hundreds of crash sites, and have seen it all when it comes to the kind of damage cars can sustain in every conceivable scenario.
2. Automobile Assembly. I built them, inspected them and have friends that do structural analysis/testing of welds.


And the most important one...

3. Telling me what I drive/like or support You do not know me or the cars I have owned, so to say I hate the Camaro, American Cars, or Performance Cars is the dumbest assertion you can make. I have owned Camaros, Monte Carlo SS's, Classic Buicks, Oldsmobiles, and the list goes on and on. My dream car is a Ferrari 575M (yes, a foreign car) and I currently drive a Jaguar because GM stopped building luxury rear wheel drive cars that look as sexy and drive as nicely as my Vanden Plas.

I have never owned a Ford product (my Jag is NOT a Ford:p) and never will, except perhaps a 55 'bird someday. I am not out to destroy the Camaro's reputation as I think that is being done by GM itself.

Now, I do not have the ability to blow up or enhance the picture to show the weld area clearly, but if you examine the area where the monosides came apart(the stampings that make up the sides of the car)
where the roof panel has been peeled back cleanly on both sides, you will understand what I see when I look at the picture. There is no tearing of material, rather a clean separation on both sides of the bodyshell. There are no pieces of the roof panel attached to the monosides. This means that the welds came apart along those seams. Weld failure pure and simple. The speed of the car and the fact that it is a metal pole the car struck was not information available to me or anyone else here at the time. Physics is a **** and no doubt explains much of what you see in the picture.

That said, at the plant I worked at, if a body came apart like that under even the most extreme test, production would stop in a heartbeat. The roof can tear, crumple, deform, or collapse, but the welds should never fail. All vehicles made at the plant I worked were 5 star in all collision testing aspects. The Camaro got only 4 stars.




Again... welcome to the Club!:D

mhmacw

yea lol. i dont know about all the broken weld b.s. but i did see a f250 superduty hit a wooden telephone pole almost dead on. it killled the driver and two other passengers. they found engine parts 750 yards awy and the pole is still in service. a couple of splinters but nothing serious.

nooshinjohn

One more thing there Chad...

The Car/Damage: Clearly there is nothing "fishy" going on...the car hit the pole (described above) at a high rate of speed, and since the pole was made not to fail, something else had to, and that something else was the car. Looking at all four images, the car survived relatively well, except in the front where the impact took place. Also, the majority of, if not all of, the *peeling back* of the metal was done during extraction of the driver...you can clearly see evidence of the Jaws of Life and Hydraulic Spreaders.

The Jaws were not needed here as the driver opened the door and walked out, although he could just as easily exited through the gaping hole in the firewall/dashboard.:rolleyes::eek:;) It is this part that is "fishy".

nooshinjohn

here is a shot of the Camaro "body in white". This explains fully what happened to the car we have been discussing. You can see the area where the monosides meet the roof. It would seem that the roof is NOT a welded structure. Instead it is held in place by some other means, must likely adhesives. This explains the clean separation. Looking over the rest of the structure, it becomes clear that there is nothing that would have stood a chance of preventing the damage we see at even a lower speed of say 60 mph. The car is just not intended or designed to take a focused impact from the front (focused meaning an impact area of say 18" or less.)

Looking at this picture also shows that the pole impacted the car a the absolute weakest portion of the structure, just inside the right side frame rail, bypassing the crumple zones, and offering almost no resistance to the impact until the pole met the firewall.

TouchOfEvil

nooshinjohn wrote: »

here is a shot of the Camaro "body in white". This explains fully what happened to the car we have been discussing. You can see the area where the monosides meet the roof. It would seem that the roof is NOT a welded structure. Instead it is held in place by some other means, must likely adhesives. This explains the clean separation. Looking over the rest of the structure, it becomes clear that there is nothing that would have stood a chance of preventing the damage we see at even a lower speed of say 60 mph. The car is just not intended or designed to take a focused impact from the front (focused meaning an impact area of say 18" or less.)

So what your saying is everything you have argued about bad welds this whole thread was for nothing?:D

nooshinjohn

TouchOfEvil wrote: »

So what your saying is everything you have argued about bad welds this whole thread was for nothing?:D

New information always comes to light. The theory on welds was based on my experience with autobody construction at the plant in which I worked. I guess being bankrupt when you are trying to build a new car means having to cut back on weld-bots, so you use superglue instead.:eek:;)

The roof peeled off because it was not welded in the first place. There, I said it!:p:D

TouchOfEvil

nooshinjohn wrote: »

New information always comes to light. The theory on welds was based on my experience with autobody construction at the plant in which I worked. I guess being bankrupt when you are trying to build a new car means having to cut back on weld-bots, so you use superglue instead.:eek:;)

The roof peeled off because it was not welded in the first place. There, I said it!:p:D

The problem is the lack of duct tape vs super glue.:eek::D

nooshinjohn

TouchOfEvil wrote: »

The problem is the lack of duct tape vs super glue.:eek::D

LOL... yes, duct tape could have prevented all the damage except perhaps a couple scratches.:p:D

ryanjoachim

nooshinjohn wrote: »

LOL... yes, duct tape could have prevented all the damage except perhaps a couple scratches.:p:D

Screw that, give them some Gorilla tape! You'll never get the roof off then.

Timothy Smith

Spicoli sez:

Relax, all right?

My old man is a television repairman. He's got the ultimate set of tools....I can fix it!

Fongolio

Fongolio wrote: »

Perhaps they are now engineering safety into the cars just like F-1 and Indy cars. They are quite literally designed to come apart on hard impact. Each piece that flies off takes a small amount of the energy of impact with it thus saving the driver the brunt of impact.

Like I said weeks ago in this thread.