About 12 years ago a friend of mine bought a beautiful, black, 34 Dodge sedan from a mutual friend. I had ridden hundreds of miles in the car and the owner/builder had driven it for thousands more. A few months after the purchase, his wife and kids were driving down the freeway when a rear control arm mount on the tri-4 bar broke off the frame, sending the car up on the jersey barriers and almost rolling it. Everyone got bounced around and the car was totalled. It turns out that the culprit was a tack welded mount that was never finish welded. The frame was built and then flipped for welding, and the one mount was missed. It took almost 5 years, but it came loose and nearly killed a lot of people. Putting a mark or tag on each mounting point welded to indicate what you've finished isn't a stupid idea once you see the result of one late-night error.
I've looked at it a bit more and going of the limited information here: It doesn't sound as if he hit road debris or a pothole (road irregularities) to cause this catastrophic event. It looks very much like a TCI front suspension (or clone) judging by the upper control arm eccentric and one piece upper control arm. Anti-roll bar connection is annother clue for me. Digesting the destruction, I would assume the lower control arm mount failed most likely from fatigue. Whether due to improper use (seems unlikely judging condition of the car) or incomplete installation or design flaw, it is still fatigue. This type of IFS relies completely on the strength of the crossmember to control the weight of the vehicle. If you are to compare it to OEM type applications it is very commonplace to mount the control arm to the crossmember and frame rail on separate mounts. This spreads braking loads and road shock over a larger area and eliviates the stress on the single fixture of the crossmember. Without talking with the owner of the car to detail the exact events that led up to this it is only my best answer for what happened. The lower control arm left the car ripping the upper ball joint completely out of the upper arm! You can still see remanants of the Aldan Eagle coil over shock still attached to the crossmember. You can make out where the lower control arm,wheel, spindle and shock body exited under the right side fender by the scuff marks on the door from the dislodged fender and the folded running board. That would also explain the disjointed rear axle, ultimately causing the car to flip up and over. As a chassis manufacturer this is the stuff nightmares are made of. Thank you so much for providing these pictures. I certainly hope everyone involved is safe and taken care of.
Thanks for the additional comments everyone! No update as of yet. Nexxussian: Unfortunately that's the only pic I have of the area in question. Elpolacko: You're welcome! Not the kind of pics I like posting but at least they can serve as a "word to the wise" of how not to build certain features of our rods! Regards, Dave.
Glad the dude is allright--accidents suck in any car. For my .02--this is another example of using modern suspensions and dumbass ideas on 1930's engineered frames and bodies. Go traditional or go to buy a muscle car. It's all about the right fit in the right car using quality parts.
Was this car built in Victoria, BC? If so, can you name the person? I wouldn't want any work done there.
Perhaps waiting to get the facts on what happened would be the course of action before people start bad mouthing a guys business. Just a thought.
I agree, but if guys are going to do this kind of work and hold themselves out as professional, they still need to be accountable. I would like to know who built that chassis as well.
More a result of trying to make things easier for home installation. My .02...if you need it made "easier" than you have no business trying to assemble it in the first place. Some things go together complicated for a reason.
Guys, don't get to down on IFS. Any front end or anything can fail. It's all about craftsmenship and design.
2 years ago on Thursday I was involved in an accident in my '50 chevtruck. It was built by Elpolacko using a Mustang II based suspensin of his design. I broadsided a 97 silverado at about 40 MPH, pushed him into a toyota and the toyota across the sidewalk. I got a broken finger out of the wreck. The thing that saved my ass was the workmanship and design of the front end. Don't tell me the the front end is unsuitable for our use. The truck was DRIVEN to the Lone Star Round Up the day we got it back on the road, from phx. Then in august I drove it to the H.A.M.B.drags in Joplin mo. This is with the SAME front end components the were in the wreck! All the parts and crossmember were carefully checked. I trust my life and my daughters life in this truck. How many rod shops do you know that have their products crash tested? jerry
Having seen the pictures I am glad nothing serious happened to your friend . The car can be repaired but the human body and soul is a lot more fragile. As to the car, many times it comes down to parts and build quality. Every bolt and weld needs to be inspected over and over again. Even in the best built rods things can go wrong, like a nut that works it self off in a suspension part. All can lead to a catastrophe. My 34 has an IFS and a Vette IRS. Who would have guessed that the damn glass monospring would have delaminated while hauling ass down the road. Accident ensued but no serious damages to car or people. Could have been a lot worse. Now I spend considerably more time making sure things are good to go.
I've always been suspicious of those center-mounted lower control arms...Like has already been said here....normal braking imparts a lot of leverage on that mount. It's probably welded to 3/16ths [or maybe 1/8th in stuff for the cheapie crossmembers] mild steel. Metal fatigue is a part of a setup like this. When I set up my 40 chevy, I went with the radius arm attached to the bottom of the frame rail...a mutation of the stock mustang radius arm. It was engineered that way for a reason and I borrowed the idea to protect myself [and other motorists on the road] from this flawed design..IMHO..
Sometimes it is difficult to pinpoint the cause of an accident, after the fact. Although the lower control arm mount has been torn from the crossmember...isn't it possible that this only happened AFTER another part failed and allowed the lower control arm to contact the ground surface? Even a simple flat tire can sometimes cause big problems. If the suspension compopnents are subjected to the force of being dragged against the ground, then more severe damage occur. That more severe damage can then "snow-ball" to a more violent accident with even more damage resulting. At the end, how can you be sure what damage occured when? Maybe the ball joint failed and when the car dropped to the ground at speed, the control arm got torn off? Very hard to tell for certain.
I've seen the crossmembers like that, with the cracks radiating out from the bolt mounting. Luckily found before complete failure. jerry
Hey Jerry...how did you know your chevy pickup was wrecked? BAhahahaha...er, sorry. I couldn't resist.
For the Chassis Builders out there, if you had a setup like the one in question, what would you do? Add gussets to the front and gussets / braces to the frame in the rear of the lower pickup point (how about the upper)? Some other reinforccement? Or would you cut it off and start over?
Hot rods are the accumulation of parts and pieces. Some manufactured, some homebuilt and in the case of the traditionalist, old. With that in mind, a walk around of your vehicle would be a smart thing to add to the checklist before leaving the driveway. It won't stop all the failures and no one can expect to catch everything, but it sure as hell wouldn't hurt to do it. Considering how fast some hot rods are, they could just about be considered race cars. Race car drivers do a walk around, would it hurt hot rodders to do it too?
It just might be high time again to revisit the mighty and wise words of our recently departed Mr. Parks on the topic of hot rod safety. Not only for public image of our dear machines but for the safety of all who ride in or around them. Anybody got the old safety speeches of Wally?
I have an old race car inspection checklist I can scan if anybody wants a copy. If anybody's got em, I'd love to have a copy.
This is the sort of attitude that turns people away from forums like the HAMB including me. This speaks of ignorance and prejudice. I realize this is your opinion and you are definitely entitled to one, but it really isn't relevant to the issue at hand and I'm not quite sure why you felt it necessary to inject it. I really doubt lower ball joint failure caused this incident. If so there is a good chance that the spindle and wheel would still be attached to the upper ball joint and tie rod. I have seen ball joint failure before and the damage looks very different to this. Most of the time the control arm is still attached to the frame but with heavy road abrasion, in this case it's all gone suggesting total failure of the control arm attachment point! Jerry, thank you for your trust.
i have looked at a few independant front ends, 4x4 lift kits and wondered if they have to pass any testing to get dot aproval? my guess is they dont.
Before we condeme Mustang II style front end suspensions we should look carefully at why it failed .In the pix of the car I see that the lower control arm is not mounted through the crossmember but on a sub panel that appears to be tapered .This gets the car up a few inches and also makes the strength of the original design week. The most important part is missing .The gusset on the back side to the crossmember is not there . Without it this makes the front end an accident looking for a place to happen . This front end has been modified unsafe.
Granted the lower control arm mount is a weak design, but am I the only one seeing the fact that the upper ball joint is gone from the upper control arm, not torn out from leveraged force gone, but cleanly missing not even mangling the hole?
It wouldn't be at all uncommon to lose a press-in ball joint after it's been hit hard enough to break the stud. The mount gets egg shaped and the press fit goes away, ergo the ball joint (what's left of it) falls out. I've raced stock cars for a long time, and I've lost a lot of ball joints. None of this damage is consistent with breaking an upper ball joint. When that happens, the entire suspension folds into itself against the frame and the wheels bind up more or less straight ahead, even at speed. It ends up looking like a fool did your alignment and left you with about 45 degs of neg camber. If you lose a lower ball joint, the lower A-frame hits the ground and you skid unceremoniously to a stop. It is possible that he could have lost a lower joint, and dropped that side off onto the shoulder when he jerked the steering from the shock of it. That would explain why it dug in so fast. However, that scenario requires the driver to freak out when the ball joint breaks and let the passenger side drop off the road. The steering could jerk to that side, I suppose, but most of the time it doesn't since that wheel is totally unloaded after the ball joint breaks. I dunno, it's a head scratcher for sure, but I'd bet my eye teeth that it wasn't caused by an upper ball joint failure.
You must not have read any of my posts. I clearly state that it is gone. What you may not understand is that I have about 10+ years of experience with this particular style front end. I have been doing repairs on these for quite some time and have NEVER EVER seen a ball joint failure concerning this style of ball joint. I also have a very large High Definition monitor at work that I can blow the picture up with and see the parts very well. The upper arm is still very much intact. It appears that the ball stud was pulled from the body of the joint. The arm clearly did not fail, there certainly isn't enough load or force on the upper arm to do such dammage compared to the lower control arm. I have seen the construction of these front suspensions. I know what materials are involved. I have also studied how they fail, this being the worst to date that I have seen it is congruent with the others.
I read your post just fine, and I agree, if the lower joint had failed, and the thing hadn't flipped over, the wheel/tire/spindle assembly should still be attached to the upper ball joint and tie rod. However, the ensuing flip has added damage that makes it very difficult to ascertain just exactly what happened before that point in the wreck. The force of the flip could have easily broken the upper ball stud, allowing the wheel/tire/spindle assembly to escape. OR, the wreck could have been caused by something entirely different. You have all this experience with this particular suspension, and you say this failure is bad but congruent with previous failures, but then you don't actually say what caused this particular failure. You've said the lower mount failed, to which I must respond "Duh?" (you know, 'cause it's missing and all), but I'd like to know WHY it failed. You seem to know what you're talking about, do fill in the blanks. So? What was it? Spill it man!
I dont know if I dare to go into this one, but here I am. A couple questions. 1: When did the right front frame member bend? (when it hit something?)¨ If it hit something causing it to bend like that, no wonder the wheel was taken off afterwards. 2:On the other note the design makes it plausible to get the lower arm ripped off if you lose the wheel or get the wheel on the roadside. The lower bolt will surely dig into the ground. http://www.streetrodparts.tv/Install_custom-IFS-28-34.htm 3:One thing that not has been discussed here, Maybe the rear axle mounts broke, causing the car to turn off the road, Rear wheel looks to be too much forward doesn't it? This happened here in Sweden once when a T bucket accelerated when trying to pass a car, and then did a 90 degree right turn in front of it into the ditch, turned over and killed the driver.
I am so impressed by the HAMB "CSI" of this accident. I have learned a lot just by reading the scientific commentary. (Just my .02) Glad the driver was ok.
and: Again for clarification, fatigue from BRAKING LOADS. to bolster my point here is a picture of a Heidt's crossmember with TCI control arms that failed directly contributed to braking loads and improper support of the crossmember. My point is, you can see evidence of the wheel-spindle assembly being run over by the car as witnessed by the scraping of the fender, rumpled up running board and dislodged rear axle. I have rooted through my files and cannot find the final assembly picture of this truck but I do have this shot of the pattern we made. This rear "gusset" is what is needed to mount the control arm into double shear and spread the braking load into the frame as well as the crossmember. Now what would solve this debate completely would be a picture of the wheel/spindle assembly and to see if the lower control arm is still attached.
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