Old spindle thread posts I "Larry Callahan" moved

[bret]

hehe...I can assure you we'll push the Camaro, the GG Chevelle, and every other car we drive as hard as we can. Its the only way to find the performance limits.
After we broke the spindle on the Chevelle at Costa Mesa we hauled it over to CPP in Anaheim to get it fixed up. A couple days later it was up and running and Ed Capen from Goodguys drove it back up the coast to Pleasanton. He was almost home when the 540 swallowed the carb stud. Trip over. They hauled the car back to Indiana where we found the carb stud embalmed into the #4 combustion chamber. Nice.
Anyway...suspension is fixed, fender, inner fender, hood and door fixed, engine fixed by Bill Mitchell and on the way back to us for re-installation. The car will be driven to the Atlanta Goodguys autocross where we will race it again at 110% throttle.
What happened to the spindle? Well, I immediately [on Sunday]called Brent VanDerVort [Fatmans] and he immediately pulled all of his stock [and ours] for magnaflux and heat treat inspection. This was before we had any opportunity to dis-assemble the car and evaluate the damage. All of his stock was good. All of ours was good. After getting the broken spindle back for evaluation we couldn't determine 100% what caused the failure because of the collateral damage, but think there may have simply been a flaw in the forging of that particular unit.
I guess the point is that if you routinely "push your car to the limit" you need to be prepared to find that limit. We search for that limit so our customers don't have to. In this particular case "we" would include Brent VanDerVort from Fatmans, Jim Ries from CPP, and Kyle tucker from Detroit Speed. The first guy to offer assistance was Kyle...and he did it because he was instictively concerned as a hotrodder for my safety and the well being of the car. He also offered assistance in evaluating the cause of the failure. He recognizes that this situation, if left unresolved, hurts everyone in the long run. Kyle and Stacey are one of you and one of us...don't forget that.
Brent VanDerVort is also one of you and one of us. He responded immediately and fully.
So has the spindle failure been resolved? In the context of being comfortable with supplying these spindles to customers...even customers who want to autocross a 4000lb car on an extremely sticky track...yes, I am quite comfortable. I have replaced the broken spindle with a duplicate unit, I have several other of my own cars with this exact spindle [my GSX has almost 30,000 miles on it], and I have installed these spindles on my new Camaro that will be [hopefully] raced next week at the Year One event in Atlanta.
In the context of ever being satisfied with the performance of ANY of my products, failures or not...the day that happens will be my last.

[TitoJones]

What happened to the spindle? Well, I immediately [on Sunday]called Brent VanDerVort [Fatmans] and he immediately pulled all of his stock [and ours] for magnaflux and heat treat inspection. This was before we had any opportunity to dis-assemble the car and evaluate the damage. All of his stock was good. All of ours was good. After getting the broken spindle back for evaluation we couldn't determine 100% what caused the failure because of the collateral damage, but think there may have simply been a flaw in the forging of that particular unit.

Before I discuss this, most if not all my questions are directed toward Brent from Fatman, and not Bret @ Air Ride.

You don’t know what caused the failure, but have declared the remaining un-used parts to be defect free? BIG RED FLAG!!! Engineering personnel (Fatman does employ one correct?) should be researching this issue, and all clients who have this part on a vehicle should be made aware of the possibility that they might have a potential failure point on their car. Did you consider that this issue develops as the vehicle is driven and is not present on a new boxed part? Did you guys X-ray any of the forgings to see if there is a defect in all of them? I cannot believe you would disregard a major failure like that that could have killed you at a higher speed as ‘Testing the limits.’ Those limits should have been determined WAY before this product came to market and got installed on anyone’s vehicle. Post pictures of this spindle that is so far gone, that you cannot even figure out what or why it happened. There are a few engineers and hundreds of potential clients that would like to see this.



I guess the point is that if you routinely "push your car to the limit" you need to be prepared to find that limit. We search for that limit so our customers don't have to. In this particular case "we" would include Brent VanDerVort from Fatmans, Jim Ries from CPP, and Kyle tucker from Detroit Speed. The first guy to offer assistance was Kyle...and he did it because he was instictively concerned as a hotrodder for my safety and the well being of the car. He also offered assistance in evaluating the cause of the failure. He recognizes that this situation, if left unresolved, hurts everyone in the long run. Kyle and Stacey are one of you and one of us...don't forget that.

How can you possibly make that statement without even knowing what caused the failure, and why? One of Fatman’s clients is going to find that limit the hard way, mark my words. This would be my only priority if I had an AFX spindle failure, every client on our list would be getting a call from me personally, and if I had to, I’d be doing a recall of all existing parts on the street so I could determine if other spindles have a similar defect. I stand by my previous post- Brave move to put another set of these on another vehicle that could fail. I know Kyle from DSE tests his products. He also does FEA testing, real world testing, and is himself an engineer. I’ve never ever questioned a single product from DSE, but again, they don’t have these kinds of failures.






Brent VanDerVort is also one of you and one of us. He responded immediately and fully.
So has the spindle failure been resolved? In the context of being comfortable with supplying these spindles to customers...even customers who want to autocross a 4000lb car on an extremely sticky track...yes, I am quite comfortable. I have replaced the broken spindle with a duplicate unit, I have several other of my own cars with this exact spindle [my GSX has almost 30,000 miles on it], and I have installed these spindles on my new Camaro that will be [hopefully] raced next week at the Year One event in Atlanta.
In the context of ever being satisfied with the performance of ANY of my products, failures or not...the day that happens will be my last.

I so disagree. What was resolved? Fatman MUST be able to determine what caused a failure before he can declare all remaining parts as ‘good’.

As a manufacturer who does quite a large volume of USA made forgings, I can tell you that there are not cases of one single bad forging among thousands of others in a batch. They are all made at the same time, to the same specs, heat treat, and tooling requirements. For a failure like that to happen means that there is a flaw in the design, the materials, or the quality control of the parts in the entire batch. It might be time for a recall, or improvement in the design/quality control.

If Fatman is so concerned with safety, why was this failure not mentioned on your site, Fatman’s site, or in any thread on the multiple message boards directly after the event? I think your loyalty to Brent is admirable, but might be clouding your judgment on his products, and your client’s safety.
If I had that spindle on one of my cars, I would want to know to do a safety check on my vehicle. This begs the question- where are these being made, who does the quality control on them, and was anyone with a degree in engineering used at all during the development stage? What kind of FEA testing was done on this product? What kind of real world failure testing was done before this was released to the public? Is the pin a press in, or is it part of the forging? What are the material specs? Does Fatman make your tubular control arms?

I’m just thankful that when it happened that it was on a low speed parking lot event and not at an open road course where you would have seen 100+ mph. We’d be having a thread about the loss of an Air Ride employee if that were the case.

When we engineered our spindle we did a real world testing on our forgings to see what the load would need to be before the spindle broke. It held over 22,000 lbs of force before having a failure. That is a safety factor of 11, far exceeding what any OEM requires of their own products. What this means is that you could hang 6 fully loaded Camaros from the bottom ball joint of our spindle, and it wouldn’t deflect, deform, or break. I don’t think you could even put 1.5 Camaros on the end of the pin on that Fatman spindle before it did exactly what it did on your Chevelle.

This failure needs to be revisited before they kill someone. Be safe and inspect your parts before and after every event.

Tyler

[Young Gun]

Honestly, I am pretty shocked that after an event like that, there was not a complete recall of every forgeing made with the failed piece. Somebody can try and say that statistice assure that there wont be any other problems, but real life beats the snot out of statistics. When it comes to dealing with somebodies life, the cost involved with recalling and replacing parts, is nowhere near as important as ensuring that somebody will be able to go to the track and made it home for dinner with their family. A performance oriented piece needs to be able to perform, a discreptancy in the design or the construction needs to be fixed, regardless of cost. The civil suit will end up being a whole lot more. People appreciate and respect a company that will put their customers safety first. If I get a call from a company telling me part "x" has been involved with an accident, and they are recalling them to ensure my safey, I can tell you that I will have much more respect for that company. I dont want my family to have to hear that my death was due to a faulty piece that has been linked to other accidents in the past. Regardless my rant is coming from a somewhat uniformed point of view, so please do not take this as a direct attack upon the Fatman products, this applies to any product automotive related or not...

/rant

on the car note...looking awsome!

[72NovaSS]

Tyler, you hit the nail on the head about the spindle. If you didn't say what you said, i think that no one would have second guessed what was said.

Thanks for lookin out for everyone. -Brad

[James OLC]

I don't want to derail your thread - this build is really cool and I don't want to take anything away from it - but I would sure like to know more about the failure. I find it hard to imagine a spindle being so damaged that a definative failure analysis is not possible. I have to agree with the posts above - after a serious failure like this, caution and disclosure should certainly be the rule, rather than the exception.

[carguy502]

I don't want to derail your thread - this build is really cool and I don't want to take anything away from it - but I would sure like to know more about the failure. I find it hard to imagine a spindle being so damaged that a definative failure analysis is not possible. I have to agree with the posts above - after a serious failure like this, caution and disclosure should certainly be the rule, rather than the exception.
X2. This is the first that I have heard of this spindle failure. I am running them on my Nova and my Chevelle and while I have over 50,000 miles on my set on the Nova, this failure kind of makes me nervous, especially for my chevelle that is not yet on the road.

[saunacrank]

oh and what brand of spindle was this that broke?

[hotrdblder]

it was a fatmans spindle, which air ride uses on all there cars.
air ride are street rodders really many of there designs use factory mounts not designed for the loads that they see, they use tech screws to hold in rear susp etc, which is fine on a car rolling around the show field and on and off a trailer.
all of this is alarming especially when seeing spindle failures, upper shock mount failures etc, its hard to believe they mount a coil over spring to a shock mount that was designed to hold a 1960s oil shock.
all in all air ride has its place in hot rodding(obviously) thats for sure, however it is not nearly as hardcore as some think, and it simply cannot hold up to long term abuse, as has been proven. would I use air ride for a customers build yes, would i use air ride on a car i want to autocross and roadrace at open track days etc no.
ai

[bret]

While I know that we have done proper testing, evaluation, diligence, and research on the single spindle failure on the Chevelle, my wife [as only wives can do] reminded me that it doesn't really matter what I think or know...it matters what the customer thinks. Thanks sweetie.
I agree with the fact that this issue deserves its own thread that is not buried in an obscure new project discussion. I would also like to un-hijack this thread so it can return to discussing a really cool new Camaro project.
Since it is Sunday, and Mothers Day, AND I am 2 days away from finishing a 2500 hour Camaro project, I may need a day to gather meaningful, accurate information about my broken Chevelle spindle. In the meantime, the VERY bottom line is that any customer who has one of my suspension systems that contains a Fatmans spindle can certainly return them at any time for a complete re-inspection, replacement, refund, or any combination of the above. It doesn't matter if you bought it from Air Ride Technologies or from a dealer, or from the swapmeet...I will take car of it. You as the car owner/driver must feel comfortable and safe with the most vital component of your car...if you don't, it is truly worthless. My personal email is [email protected]. Keep in mind that I may be away from my desk and getting your email on my Blackberry...don't be alarmed by a breif initial reply.
That is the short story. I will start a new thread in the general discussion section [assuming the moderators will allow it there] because that area seems to have the most traffic. The forum moderators may want to move the relevant posts from this thread to that one...your choice. As I can gather ACCURATE information about yeild strength, heat treatments, materials, geometry, etc. I will post it on a dedicated webpage and link it to that thread.
So...Velocity Camaro lurkers...stay tuned. Spindle guys...let's go.

Bret Voelkel, President, Air Ride Technologies, Inc.

[Mr.VENGEANCE]

well said..

[Young Gun]

well said..

+1

and back to the camarow...I cant wait to see this thing done! its gonna look sick!

[Larry Callahan]

These are posts I moved out of the thread on the Air Ride Camaro. The thread was getting confusing and split into different topics. I moved some of the threads to this one to help keep the topics seperate.

[Desert68]

This was a catastophic failure, true? My opinion is there should be a third party failure analysis done to determine the cause of failure. If failure analysis can be done on airplane parts that augered into the ground at 500+ MPH it can certainly be done on that spindle. It would also seem prudent to have a third party Professional Engineer (as in PE stamp) review and bless the design. The potential liability here is enormous and I'm suprised at some of what is being stated in a couple postings unless there has been some form of legal review prior to posting.

I saw the picture and read the text in PHR and it struck me as a rather cavalier attitude in the text wording for a spindle failure.