Roll Bars-
Recently I went for a ride with a friend who was having a professional
install a roll cage in his RX-7. The friend already had an Autopower bar in
the car and had the rest of the kit to make it into a cage and wanted the
shop to weld in the pieces along with some other performance work.
The shop, which professionally races RX-7s refused to use the Autopower
stuff. They said that they had a customer who had had an Autopower bar to
which the shop had added their own pieces to make it into a roll cage.
Subsequently the car had been involved in a rollover crash at a race and the
only parts of the cage that failed were the Autopower welds. Fortunately
nobody was hurt. Also, they said the locations of the bar's attachment
points were weak.
My friend decided to have the shop build a complete cage and is now looking
to sell the Autopower unit.
I must write that the shop's claims could have been merely a way to get a
little more business but I believed them and would have done the same as my
friend.
Flying Fan Blades-
About 10 years ago I was at Summit Point walking through the paddock when I
came upon a fellow hillclimber who was doing some road racing in his Datsun
2000 roadster. His bonnet had a 5" slice through it which I inquired about.
He said that coming out of turn 9, just as he went under the Electrodyne
Bridge he heard a big bang and one of his metal fan blades came flying past
his head. "I think it's stuck in the bottom of the bridge!"
Needless to say, I became acutely aware of the advantages of plastic fans.
Larry Bickel
ljbtvr@aol.com
Lancaster, PA
'68 GT6, my sleeping racer
'71 TVR 2500, my street car and sometimes racer
'85 Dodge Van
'83 Chevy S10
'80 Yamaha 650
BTW- Did someone say "Niagara Falls"?
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