<VV> Need some rebuttle info

[TiM M]

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


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         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.