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 Post subject: Sad Cautionary Tale
PostPosted: May 1, 2018, 1:09 pm 
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Joined: October 19, 2010, 11:57 am
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Location: Waterloo, WI
Would love to know more details about this build. Broken welds, questionable design, etc. :(

https://jalopnik.com/man-dies-after-cra ... 1825681533

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 Post subject: Re: Sad Cautionary Tale
PostPosted: May 1, 2018, 1:11 pm 
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Joined: August 11, 2013, 6:03 am
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Saw the article on Jalopnik, was going to post it here.

Sobering. Makes me really want to do a crush test on a spare chassis when I build my exo...

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 Post subject: Re: Sad Cautionary Tale
PostPosted: May 1, 2018, 3:41 pm 
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Joined: May 27, 2006, 9:46 pm
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Location: BC, Canada. eh?
In looking at the available photos of the build, I see an alarming number of long, unsupported tubes & very little triangulation. Although I'm no engineer, the pics set ALL my alarms ringing. It almost looks like he put together just barely enough structure to support its own weight, and no more.

The fact that he was ejected would indicate that his seatbelt restraint system wasn't properly anchored, or was attached to insufficient-strength, untriangulated tubes that simply came apart on impact.

Certainly, it's a lesson to us all, but I have to admit, among all the builds I've seen on this forum, I haven't seen a single one I wasn't confident was strong, or that I would be wary of riding in...unlike the one in these photos.

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 Post subject: Re: Sad Cautionary Tale
PostPosted: May 1, 2018, 4:44 pm 
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Joined: March 30, 2011, 7:18 am
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Location: central Arkansas
There's a crash thread here. It has pictures of the aftermath of some nasty wrecks. The basic Locost chassis fared *much* better than I would have ever expected.

Also note there's at least one Locost racing series in Britain, and those curved roll cages they favor would never pass any American sanctioning body's tech. There's a bunch of crash video on YouTube, cars touching wheels and one of them flipping up in the air doing a triple axel before tumbling along the guardrail. Driver emerges "shaken, not stirred."

Also note that, despite the sanctimonious sneering at his design and workmanship, the single picture shows the car largely intact, and the text says the cause of death was subsequent to being "ejected from the vehicle." So any failure would have been of a seat belt or anchor, assuming he was belted in to start with.


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 Post subject: Re: Sad Cautionary Tale
PostPosted: May 1, 2018, 5:29 pm 
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TRX wrote:
Also note that, despite the sanctimonious sneering at his design and workmanship, the single picture shows the car largely intact, and the text says the cause of death was subsequent to being "ejected from the vehicle." So any failure would have been of a seat belt or anchor, assuming he was belted in to start with.


No doubt the Jalopnik commentariat are up to their usual snarkiness but I did think this was a telling picture. As noted, if what your seat and seat belt are attached to isn't up to snuff....

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 Post subject: Re: Sad Cautionary Tale
PostPosted: May 1, 2018, 5:34 pm 
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Joined: March 30, 2011, 7:18 am
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Location: central Arkansas
Acerguy wrote:
I did think this was a telling picture.


That picture wasn't at the link. While it shows the cage came loose from the sheet metal, it's not (as far as they say) what killed him.


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 Post subject: Re: Sad Cautionary Tale
PostPosted: May 1, 2018, 5:47 pm 
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Joined: December 17, 2010, 1:24 pm
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SAD! :cry: No further comment! :|

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 Post subject: Re: Sad Cautionary Tale
PostPosted: May 2, 2018, 8:57 am 
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I went back and looked at part of his build log. Several people commented on bad welds and he didn't want to hear it. One of his replies was "unless you were born a certified welder, ..."

There have been several times in one of my Locosts or the A Mod I've thought "this thing is probably going to kill me one day." Then I push that thought out of my head and keep smiling and driving.

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 Post subject: Re: Sad Cautionary Tale
PostPosted: May 2, 2018, 12:04 pm 
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Location: Under the weather. (Seattle)
Regardless of his choices and actions, my heartfelt thoughts go out to his family.

Suffice to say: You don't need to be a Professional Engineer or Certified Welder to make a passable effort at learning to do a respectable job at both.

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 Post subject: Re: Sad Cautionary Tale
PostPosted: June 4, 2018, 12:32 pm 
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Location: That point where the humidity and the temperature combine forces to destroy all that is good
I'm definitely no certified welder. I'm also not a sanctioned, licensed racing driver. But I have pretty good vision and like to think I can make fairly good decisions as far as I know. Being properly retained within the safety cell of that car might have made all the difference in the world, even as badly mangled as it was. EDIT: I now see the radically altered factory platform and poorly designed cage he installed. That young man might as well have stood in front of it for all the safety he didn't build into it. There's more warning value in these pictures than a hundred paragraphs of text.

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 Post subject: Re: Sad Cautionary Tale
PostPosted: June 4, 2018, 1:53 pm 
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I just noticed Matt Farah did a track test in a car that looks remarkably similar to that one (bad welds and all):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWIM8I_J4Cc&t=609s

One was obviously copying the other, or built by the same people.

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