Over on the Grassroots motorsports forum is this thread:
http://www.grmotorsports.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=7252
Go about halfway down and you'll see this very, very scary suspension - note lower shock mount and small diameter tubing. 3/4" x 1/8"
wall tube!
I've tried convincing him to change that lower a-arm and shock mounting point, but he just doesn't seem too concerned.
[Edited on 1/15/05 by kb58]
If he drives it on the road it won't be long before it changes itself 
I'd worry about the top mount and steering arm lash up as well.
Totally agree KB...
Trouble is you can't tell the "DR" anything....Cos, he's a doctor so he knows it all...
Sorry no time for the guy and his pretension.....he may well be (and I'm sure he is a doctor), but on a car board he is just one of the
guys...
He'd do well to acknowledge that and heed good advice.
Dr Frankenstein by any chance?
Originally posted by Alan B
Totally agree KB...
Trouble is you can't tell the "DR" anything....Cos, he's a doctor so he knows it all...
Sorry no time for the guy and his pretension.....he may well be (and I'm sure he is a doctor), but on a car board he is just one of the
guys...
He'd do well to acknowledge that and heed good advice.
well he's got my 'expert' contribution too now too!!! lol
looks like a lot of birds have been around the joints too........
He must be a Doctor
He welds like one
don't forget, turn the gas on !
[Edited on 15/1/2005 by Trev Borg]
I just love the shocker top mount
all you have to ask is, "would you sit in that car ?"
i hope he aint a cosmetic thingy..... did he do Jacko's jobby ?
quote:
Originally posted by Jon Ison
all you have to ask is, "would you sit in that car ?"
i hope he aint a cosmetic thingy..... did he do Jacko's jobby ?
Someone send me the obituary when it's printed in the paper.
Is he planning on using it on the road? If so SVA will pick it up.
Oh, just noticed that KB is in Canada, if it's in Canada are there regs there too?
It's very nice of you KB to show so much care to the health of fellow builders but it's obvious that this guy is not going to listen.
I would say that you have done the best you could to advize him.
It's builds such as the Doc's that give scratch built cars a bad reputation.
Not only is the lower control arm/shock mount design suspect, but the fabrication displayed will probably make matters worse.
I've read the good Doctor's web site in the past...doesn't strike me as a guy that admits to errors easily. I hope he'll heed
everyone's advice and redesign the lower control arms and shock mount (both on lwr arm and chassis side)...and maybe take a welding course, or
three!
[Edited on 15/1/05 by Pseudo7]
The back end looks as bad as the front.
Seperate arms top and bottom! This guy is frightening me.
Hi web site is here.
God, look at the welding.
Looked in his website a bit, he also holds patents for a traffic camera system. I am not finding much to like about this man.
[Edited on 15/1/05 by gazza285]
All I can say it what do you expect from a texan.... what other famous texans do we know that have a problem admitting to errors of judgement?
Jesus guys, give him a break!!
OK the current wishbone design is unsuitable, but like he says - it isn't finished. With a bit of plate welded in similar to the book design
they'll be fine. The shock mount is no further inwards than a book bone and his are made of 3mm wall seamless. Book bones are made of 3/4"
16swg and are obviously fine. Top shock mounts need some gussetts.
What's wrong with the rear? Strong/stiff enough if a little over complicated. Inelegant if you're gonna be picky. Absolutely nothing
wrong with individual straight links instead of wishbones. Totally eliminates bending loads. In his case he may have rear bump steer issues due to
the location of his track control arm mount being further out than his wishbone mount. Maybe he wants some bump toe out? Whatever, it certainly
isn't the worst irs design I've seen.
Some of the welding in hard to reach places looks a bit bumpy. So does some of mine. A weld has to be strong enough - not look pretty
Sorry for the moan. It's good to give people advice and also to criticise (providing you really know better), but it's not very helpful the
way people seem to be jumping on the "lets slag off somebody for a laugh" bandwagon with, in some cases, comments just as misguided as the
current wishbone design.
OK moan over. Lets keep this friendly!
Liam
Liam, you obviously have a very generous nature which is to be commended, I also try to look for the best in everyone, but in this case I have to
agree with the general consensus.
If this car ever gets near tarmac in its present condition, Dr Hess will probably die, and possible others in the immediate vicinity
I'm not ignoring potentially dangerous construction in some quest to see only the best in people - like i said, I agree the wishbone in it's
current form is unsuitable. But like the DR says, it's not finished!
My interpretation of 'the general consensus' from reading the posts here goes like this...
The whole car is a piece of crap. The rear end is laughably bad too (ha ha). The guy is obviously a complete tw*t (ho ho). He's a disgrace to
amateur car builders everywhere. It's probably cos he's from texas.
That's what I dont agree with, and dont like to read. A bunch of comments ranging from technically incorrect, through smart-arse digs to
personal insults. Constructive criticism is good, if mostly absent from this thread, but the slagging off is pointless. Even if he really is a
pretentious arse (he does call his car Papillion) the thought that he might be reading this makes me feel slightly ashamed.
Liam
If he lived in Cornwall, I would offer to give him a hand with the welding, the design I am not qualified to comment
"What's wrong with the rear? Strong/stiff enough if a little over complicated. Inelegant if you're gonna be picky. Absolutely nothing
wrong with individual straight links instead of wishbones"
Are you taking the piss?
[Edited on 16/1/05 by gazza285]
the rear suspensiondoesn't need wishbones, a pair of staight arms works just fine.
Hell my production car uses a pair of straight arms for the lower part of the IRS. and there's one in texas that hangs with the best of them on
the track.
I dont have enough knowledge to critisize the design but i probably would have done a few things differently like turning the upper brackets on the
IRS 90° to give a longer welding area to the frame.
He did reinforce the rails where he drilled holes through so that's not bad thinking i guess.
The welding quality...hmm,we all,except those we know on this forum,could do with some improvement.
The main point was that KB (and others)had some serious thoughts about the front wishbone design and tried to advize the Dr. to change that in order
to avoid serious accidents in the future with that car.
He (the Dr.) did'nt give me the impression that this well meant advize was taken seriously.
quote:
Originally posted by gazza285
"What's wrong with the rear? Strong/stiff enough if a little over complicated. Inelegant if you're gonna be picky. Absolutely nothing wrong with individual straight links instead of wishbones"
Are you taking the piss?
[Edited on 16/1/05 by gazza285]
as an ex scrutineer all i can say is if a car built by "whoever" turned up with welds presented in that condition i personally would not
sign my name and allow it to race. allmost all the cars i scrutineer'd where home built (grass track) and the 1st point of call, cos its in your
face was look at the welding, this often gave an indicator as to what the rest of the car was like, welds ground back made you look twice too.
Allmost all our customers specify "leave welds as laid" and at times "unpainted" that way they can be inspected visually, i accept
visual inspection is not the "be all and end all" but working on the principle "if it looks right it prob is" you get there most
of the time. I suspect given a bit of a knock or tug you could pull bars off that chassis, take a look at Hellfires pics, the bars have broken in
places with the welds still intact, i fear in this case the bars would pull out of the weld as there looks to be next to no penertration.
Sorry if i offend but thats my humble opinion.
I certrainly don't like to take the pee from anybody who has the enthusiasm to get stuck in, and there has obviously been many hours of work put
into this. His skills however, clearly don't match his his enthusiasm.
I'm not a professional welder, and I've made a few welds that I'm not overly proud of in the past, but the state of the welds on that
chassis is frightening.
Liam, the "book" front lower wishbone is of extremely marginal design, as numerous threads on here have concluded in the past. Simply
adding a plate for the shock mounting to Dr Hess's front lower wishbones will not solve an absolutely fundamental design flaw he has added by
introducing a bend into the rear tube. This tube is heavily loaded in compression (probably more so than any other tube in the entire locost), and a
bend here will cause it to fail pretty much the first time the brakes are used in anger.
Constructions like this are simply not good for the Locost community.
My welding is not good well to be truly honest awful -- but when I see this :-) At lest If I make kludge I know to grind it out and start again.
Liam is obviously not taking the piss, he rightly points out that we should stick to constructive criticism. A fair point considering the effort
involved in a project of this magnitude.
I believe that Dr Hess's problem will hopefully solve itself if he has any sense - a violent shakedown on an airfield will soon prove any major
weaknesses, without any major chance of injury to himself or others.
Obviously it is well worth pointing out obvious errors, or even suspected errors, at the risk of offending, in the interests of making people think
twice.
[Edited on 16/1/05 by JoelP]
Yay! Glad somebody understood my post! I must confess though that I hadn't clocked the bend in the rear wishbone tube whilst looking at the
shock mounts. Dunno why the hell he did that to be honest.
But it's not gonna snap and cause his car to explode in a ball of flames, killing everyone nearby (as some people seem to think) - it might bend
a little and he'll stop and think "ooh er". That's about it. Look at hellfire's crash pics and previous posts on the
subject of bending wishbones to appreciate what it would take for even mere 16 guage ERW to fail catastrophically (i.e. snap), let alone 3mm wall
cds.
Liam
quote:
Originally posted by JoelP
...Obviously it is well worth pointing out obvious errors, or even suspected errors, at the risk of offending, in the interests of making people think twice.
quote:
Originally posted by Liam
...But it's not gonna snap and cause his car to explode in a ball of flames, killing everyone nearby (as some people seem to think)...Liam
The argument "it's not finished" is moot. There's nothing can be done with that car to make it roadworthy.
I too was a scrutineer and if I had been presented with that degree of workmanship and disregard for basic design principles, the owner would have
been told to put the car back on the trailer.
Hopefully he's not too proud to ignore the groundswell of shock and disaproval, even though it probably owes him a few dollars.
Whats the problem? It looks fine to me!!
did you read the thread or jump straight to the end?!
It's funny to bump into this thread here. I mentioned to Dr. Hess six months ago on GRM that his welds looked scarry. His answer was the pat
"they don't have to be pretty to work"
It's amazing the human ability to rationalize. Every welding text out there says "this is how the weld should look" On top of that,
even a pretty weld can lack penetration and be weak. So if the visible is poor, why should we assume that the invisible will be good?
Howard Gardener postulates that there are a variety of distinct intellegences. It stands to reason that we will inevitably better at some than others.
Beware the fellow who thinks that he's strong in all areas, for he is deluded and therefore dangerous.
A buddy who designs and builds tube-frame cars said, "Doesn't Hess realize his welds don't *look* like good welds? Has he ever seen
welds like that on any car driven on the road?"
In respond to his "they don't have to be pretty to work," I'm not sure that phrase applies here. A good looking weld isn't
guaranteed to be good. A bad-looking weld is much more likely to be bad. Which would he prefer?
At least we tried; what more can we do?
[Edited on 3/5/05 by kb58]
Am really in no position to offer any critique.
BUT I must say seeing his welds actually gave me a good confidence booster. I'm positive that I can do better welding than that + I've got
good enough sense to grind out and reweld bad looking welds.
So if he can do it, I most certainly can.
Just for interest, are those really MIG welds? It looks like some of my stick welds 18 months ago when I started out.
This remains me to my early years when i build a go-kart. The welds where very crapy. At some point i wish someone told me that and that it was too
dangerous. Fortunately nothing happened.
Besides the welding the most scary think this men does is not learning from other peoples errors. In my eyes it is the worst thing you can do.
After all, mechanical problems can be repaired.
I'm not touching this subject with a pole.
Obviously the guy has been informed about the general consensus. He isnt changing his mine. No need to try drum up support.
Remember.. a smart man learns from every situation!
With an atitude like Dr Hess has, I'm just glad they don't practice medcine over here. 
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