parts failure

[tinbasher]

Sorry to barge in folks, I haven't been around for a while, to busy driving the old van .

The purpose of this post is to relay a wee story that might be helpful to us folk that are running some aftermarket parts to drop the height of our vans even if its just a little .

To be clear I have run these parts on my van since putting it on the road around 6 years ago and turned around 10,000 miles over all sort of road surfaces ..

Earlier this week we were touring around the east coast of Scotland, reasonably close to home but in unfamiliar territory .Any hoo travelling through a small village I missed the sign for some seriously elevated sleeping policemen traffic calming nearly got slowed enough but hit the first hump pretty hard ..These things were huge and pretty wide so the front end got the full impact at 20mph , that got us pretty much airborne as the back wheels hit the hump ,followed by a loud bang ..

I stopped just a short distance from the "hazzard" and it was obvious the van was down in the left rear corner. A fully compressed shock lead me to suspect a broken torsion bar ,so I called the recovery and got the van back home . After being dropped off I drove the van around to the house and just as I turned the corner another loud bang confirmed the other side has just failed ..

I got around to stripping the rear fully expecting a couple of broken torsion bars .. Thankfully they were both intact. The same couldn't be said for the aftermarket adjustable spring plates

The spline section of the outer plate had radially sheared around the tig weld .. nice looking weld as well but pretty doesn't mean indestructible

I have to accept some responsibility for the out come and pay attention to the traffic calming , but with the state of the roads these days the same result can occur by hitting a pot hole ..

Be careful out there ..

 

[sparkywig]

Who supplied the spring plates?

 

[tinbasher]

I would have to go through the parts invoices , but that would just throw up the supplier not the manufacturer. The welder could do with a course on weld prepping and using some filler rod to beef up the fillet a little . Perhaps even welding the inside as well as the outer face .

Its not a post to complain just a post to highlight a potential weakness . We try and avoid incidents like potholing or traffic calming mountaineering but sometimes we get caught out and the components might be a little more resilient .. Thank fully the main spring plate was retained in the recess in the torsion tube casting which stopped things from being a complete collapse so its not all bad.. just a concern .. Im going to do a little turning job on these to improve the penetration and re weld on both the inner and outer faces .. and purchase a replacement set to scavenge the splined carriers to carry as spares to get me out of a hole should it happen again.. its a 20 minute job to replace them, better than a 6 hour wait for the recovery ..

 

[mike202]

We spent years perfecting good smooth road surfaces. Now we deliberately build bumps into the smooth surfaces

Hope you get your bus fixed soon.

 

[tinbasher]

Done it today, back on the road. Turned the remains of the old weld off the splined hub, and cut in a weld prep for penetration. then chamfered the front and back sides of the edges of the plate at the hole and tigged the boss back in with a decent weld fillet and filler rod. Had to stick the repaired plates back in the lathe to turn down the inside weld so the plate sat properly against the inner spring plate . after that just a case of refitting to the shafts and sliding them in the van, buttoned it up gave it a bounce and took it for a spin around the block ..

Job done In theory it should be a lot stronger than the original example twice the weld area and 3 times the penetration with added filler rod .. fingers crossed ..

 

[naskeet]

Back in 1979, I encountered a "traffic-calming" speed hump, whilst driving a 1975 Toyota Hiace Mk.1 Danbury motor-caravan, towing a baggage trailer, on a country road in Norfolk or Suffolk, at circa 40~50 mph. The 30 mph speed restriction sign was obscured by tree foliage so I encountered the speed humps at significantly more than 30 mph. Apart from the thump-thump noise as the front & rear wheels passed over the hump, I barely noticed any perturbation, despite sitting over the front wheels of this forward-control vehicle. I wouldn't expect my 1973 VW "1600" Type 2's reaction to have been much different!

 

[Mechanoid]

Back in 1979, I encountered a "traffic-calming" speed hump, whilst driving a 1975 Toyota Hiace Mk.1 Danbury motor-caravan, towing a baggage trailer, on a country road in Norfolk or Suffolk, at circa 40~50 mph. The 30 mph speed restriction sign was obscured by tree foliage so I encountered the speed humps at significantly more than 30 mph. Apart from the thump-thump noise as the front & rear wheels passed over the hump, I barely noticed any perturbation, despite sitting over the front wheels of this forward-control vehicle. I wouldn't expect my 1973 VW "1600" Type 2's reaction to have been much different!

I bet the baggage trailor wasn't so happy about it! I'm surprised it didn't end up on your roof!

 

[naskeet]

I bet the baggage trailor wasn't so happy about it! I'm surprised it didn't end up on your roof!

The home-built baggage trailer barely noticed the speed-humps either.

The roof rack was full of lightweight items such as sleeping bags and the interior of the 1975 Toyota Hiace Mk.1 motor-caravan was carrying a full complement of passengers.

 

[Clem]

I've been over lots of speed bumps and my wheels didn't fall off, but that's not the point of the thread is it?

tinbasher - glad it's sorted, it would be good if you could advise who supplied them.

 

[Earlybay1]

Probably made in ROC?

 

[W1K1]

that was a piss poor weld to hold up the torsion arm. It might have looked pretty, but insufficient weld for the job it's doing