<VV> Need some rebuttle info

[Mike Jacobi]

This is why you don't inflate all the tires the same.  The owners manual
specifies much higher pressures for the rear tires than for the front.

Gotta follow the instructions

Mike (happily unflipped all these years) in Michigan


On 3/25/09 12:49 PM, "TiM M" <mr_tim34 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 
> Hi, I'm the guy with the electric Rampside in California. I belong to an
> Electric Vehicle mailing list as well as this one. This showed up today and I
> figured I could turn to this list to get some reasonable information to rebut
> this guys contentions. I'm not looking for attacks on the guy I'd just like to
> set the record straight. I don't think my 4000 pound Rampside is in any danger
> of rolling any time soon :-)
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> TiM 
> '61 Rampside
> http://www.evalbum.com/656
> 
> 
> To: Electric Vehicle Discussion List <ev at lists.sjsu.edu>
> Message-ID: <20090323204730.8C553161533 at spaceymail-a4.g.dreamhost.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
> 
>          Corvairs would flip because of "wheel tuck". I had four
> friends flip one. Two of them did not survive. Another group of
> friends lost control of one, but just spun out.
> 
>          The rear suspension was a knock-off of the early VW. Worked
> great on a narrow, lightweight Bug, but the tire sidewall strength
> was not increased when they applied the suspension design to the much
> heavier and wider Corvair.
> 
>          The rear suspension was the "swing axle" style. The wheels
> were connected to the axles directly, and only the inside of the axle
> would pivot. Thus, as the wheel dropped downward, the wheel would
> tilt. The bottom of the tire would "tuck" under the car.
> 
>          When you hit a big bump going around a corner, as the car
> came back down, the outside wheel would have a _lot_ of force put on
> it from the side. This is because the wheel was tilted under the car.
> This would pop the bead off the rim and you would lose control of the
> car. Sometimes, the car would just roll over. Sometimes, the tire
> would pop _and_ the car would roll over. This design flaw killed my
> two friends.
> 
>          The other problem was that the car was _very_ back-heavy,
> just like a VW Bug. If you filled all the tires equally with air, the
> front tires were over-inflated or the back tires were under-inflated,
> or both. When you would enter a turn, the under-inflated rear tires
> would allow the back of the car to "slosh" towards the outside of the
> turn. This would make the car steer more towards the center of the
> turn than the driver had intended. (Over-steer) Sometimes folks would
> steer back, and then enter a series of over-compensating maneuvers
> with greater and greater amplitude. Other times, the first abrupt
> turn was enough to put the car into a spin and out of control. This
> design flaw is what caused my other friends to wreck their Corvair.
> 
> On the Bug, the weight was not as great so the problem was not nearly
> as severe. The sidewalls were stiff enough in relation to the weight
> of the car.
> 
>          This is an excellent example of a suspension system design
> that worked pretty well on a low-power, small vehicle, but when it
> was misapplied to a larger, more powerful vehicle, it caused
> countless fatalities.
> 
>          Wheel motors are that sort of design. They work quite well
> on slow, low-power vehicles like lift trucks and perhaps NEVs. They
> will cause countless fatalities if misapplied to powerful highway
> speed vehicles.
> 
> 
>       
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