RE: [A/S] Scary stuff

["Perry Joe Scudder" <perryjoe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Tom,
I do not want to get into a long discussion on this subject, but I have a
friend that retired from a company in Milwaukee, WS, that made the frames of
the pickup trucks for Ford, Dodge, and GM all. He told me the BIG secret to
designing a truck frame was in getting it to "crumple" in the right places
in an accident, yet be strong enough to withstand the stresses put on it by
the working load. He went on to say that GM and Ford were miles ahead of the
rest of the industry in doing their home work and crash testing, and both
were about even in their design performance in crash testing. He worked in
the prototype shop at the company, so would work with the engineers of the
various companies to fabricate a prototype for testing their frame designs.
This usually went through lots of trial and error testing to get there, so
putting on your "grubby clothes" and crawling under the truck will not do
much for most people. I have a degree in mechanical engineering, and know it
would do me no good to try and figure out the fine points of a frame design
by looking under the truck.

Joe Scudder
WBCCI 8624