And you thought your workmanship and welding was bad... (youtube video)

This is one of the worst bits of amateur engineering I have ever seen. I rarely comment on youtube videos but I wanted to smack this guy up the head and give him a real wake up call. Here's my comment:

Man... I don't even know where to begin with the atrocities in this video. Whatever problems you thought you had with your original suspension system, there are MUCH simpler methods of changing it. Not even getting into the fact that pushrod suspension has very little real engineering merit beyond aerodynamics on open wheeled cars. For instance there are many, many talented custom coilover builders out there that can make a spring/damper setup that is custom to your car. This is literally just about the most complicated and half assed "fix" you could have possibly done. There are numerous very poor engineering design decisions associated with every single component of your creation. Like the doubling up of rod end bearings on your rockers. This could easily have been replaced by a single degree of freedom pivot bushing. The way the suspension forces are fed through your suspension subframe is extremely inefficient. There also appears to be no thought whatsoever about how those forces will interact with the chassis they're bolted to. There is no cleanup, deburring, or dressing whatsoever to anything you've cut or drilled and in general it shows a real lack of craftsmanship. This appears to have been a nice car at one point and it has now been irreversibly and shoddily modified. To be honest, I would be really surprised if you car would even pass a technical inspection at your next track day. This is a warning: THIS WILL FAIL EVENTUALLY AND SOMEONE WILL GET HURT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdXt4swCux4&index=3&list=WL&t=0s

This guys heart is in the right place. Instead of tearing him down why don’t we try to help him out. In the end he built a twin trubo e55 and is learning from his mistakes. 

It's really not that bad. I doubt it will fail, but it's probably not much better than factory setup. Your comment, though, has "armchair engineer" written all over it and approaches shiny happy person territory. It's not helpful, nor correct.

Is it bad I just look at it and think "Neat, but I could build that lighter" 

Compared to that, my workmanship and welding IS bad...

Lot of things I would do different, like not doing it in the first place cause it brings zero benefits to the party. But he is ahead of those that have never tried.

Wisdom comes from experience, and experience from a lack of wisdom. 

Pete

maschinenbau said:

 

Is it bad I just look at it and think "Neat, but I could build that lighter" 

Yeah my thought was “man that looks heavy.” Plus as a certified old man I thought “what about his trunk space??” Haha

Spring cups on pivoting pushrod suspension?

Without proper pivoting coilovers, he's severely hindered the concept.

Fueled by Caffeine said:

This guys heart is in the right place. Instead of tearing him down why don’t we try to help him out. In the end he built a twin trubo e55 and is learning from his mistakes. 

A few years ago, there was someone here that was building a RWD 3 wheeler, and many pointed out the rater clear faults with the design.  IIRC, that person just got angry and left.  Sometimes, people think they know better, even if they don't.  And get angry when anyone challenges them.  

It looks like it belongs on an excavator rather than a Mercedes Benz but it not something I could pull off. 

Still not sure he couldn’t have found a simpler solution in the aftermarket.

I've seen some half-assed engineering in my day (ranging from rally cars to U.S. Navy warships), and this doesn't really rank up with a lot of other things out there. Are there flaws to the design? Sure. Are those some shoddy-looking welds? Looks that way. It certainly looks like a complicated and heavy way to do what could otherwise probably be done with conventional suspension setup tuning.

But still, I don't really see any need for the outright contempt. Hopefully the guy will take suggestions into consideration and make improvements in the design and workmanship. If not, he won't. I don't really care about him or his car, so if he wants to try somethign on it, I'm all for it. If it works, good on him. If it sucks, he'll likely change the design or the concept, like most of us do when trying new things on our cars or elsewhere.

Overall, this thread gets a "meh" from me. On the scale of workmanship out there in the car community, this doesn't rank anywhere near the bottom.....

It's far from perfect but to be fair that car has had 2 years of hard track miles on it since he built that setup. He's somewhat local to me and I've shared the track with him, it's quite the machine and completely outside of the box (big wing, splitter, coolers, twin turbos in the trunk feeding the blower). I think he is just finishing rebuilding the motor, himself, in his garage which isn't something you see everyday in that type of car (except for Mazduece of course).

Adam

Now that I'm looking at his other vids, he's doing some pretty interesting stuff. I like how he explains everything, the concepts, the build. Not a lot of stuff I'd do to my own car, but definitely the kind of stuff that some of my (non-automotive) engineer friends would do, just for fun.  He's having fun doing creative stuff, which I think is pretty awesome. The fact that he actually goes to a track to test everything is a big step up from most people who do all their car mods and then just drive them around on public roads and never actually open them up....

haha oh man i got this late 80's FWD V8 Cadillac as a trade plus cash once. instead of a cat it had a straight pipe welded in there...that looked like someone drunkenly tried to teach their Golden Retriever seeing eye dog how to weld.

it was a riot

also he'd hooked up the climate control's blower motor up to a household light switch... under the hood.