This came to me recently and I don't know if there is anything to it.
Remember last July when we were looking into suspension and axle failures?
This seems to have been pigeon holed in cyberspace since then.
Jack Woehrle
So long in replying -- had 6500 Emails from last July to weed thru.
My ex boss here in the USA (now retired) says the British had high
tensile steel forgings that they either insisted on thru-hardening or
lacked a good process of case hardening to retain a tough, malleable
core. Apparently when they've reached fatigue they break instead of bend.
This was known here at the time he was involved with importation
of engineless ACs for Shelby, which is why Phil Remington there
specified US replacements for that car's spindles. All cars receiving
their engines over here had this done, sort of a preemptive recall
campaign. There was enough visual difference in the parts that some
concours people have raised authenticity issues over the substitution.
I think he said the originals were shipped back so probably only
several carsets made the round trip for the whole of the production
run! I think Brian Lister dealt with a similar spindle problem.
But, and this is dead serious --there is a potential epidemic of
failure parts awaiting us, I fear.. There should be some test lab
which can section apart any unfailed test part and then with Tinius
Olsen tester verify if that is a potential root cause of potential
failure in the whole class of parts -- the answer being to then
commission a new run of CNC parts. The alternative to CNC
is to CAST replacements out of 17-3 Stainless casting alloy.
That material, once simply heated to 1100 deg F. and air
quenched is said to combine both 180,000 psi yield with
good elongation (ductility) properties. I am NOT the expert
but can furnish two people to amplify this if desired -- the one
I mentioned, and another a metallurgist specializing in stainless.
Larry Gallo
Jari Tabell wrote:
> JWoesvra@aol.com wrote:
>
> .....
>
> > BTW, Jeff Mennen rolled his GT6 in the same race coming out of Canada.
> > The cause was a broken front lower trunion. I had driven the car in the
> > grouprace earlier in the day!
>
> > I feel strongly that we need to eliminate these design failures whenever
> > possible. This is real racing and the strictly by the book original spec
cars
> > are scary under these conditions.
> >
> > Jack Woehrle
> > SVRA technical director
>
> That's another weak point that I have noticed with all Spitfire related
Triumphs.
> The vertical link at the front lower trunnion either:
>
> bend (with good luck): http://personal.inet.fi/koti/jtabell/link2.jpg
> or
> break (with not so good luck):
http://personal.inet.fi/koti/jtabell/LINK1.JPG
>
> Does anyone have any cure for that?
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