Horrible Mechanical Failures: Looks Like the Tin Man's Undies After Taco Tuesday

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Automotive Insanity > Horrible Mechanical Failures: Looks Like the Tin Man's Undies After Taco Tuesday

Tsuru: May 12, 2008

Throatwarbler posted:

So where is the failure? Everything looks like it's fine?

It's an electronic component in a Landrover. It IS the failure. Made by Lucas no doubt.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2013 13:18

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 11:39

Tsuru: May 12, 2008

Lightbulb Out posted:

VW/Audi we can assume?

That depends... do they use synchros for fuel level signalling?

# ¿ Jun 28, 2013 20:39

Tsuru: May 12, 2008

One Eye Open posted:

Just been catching up on this thread. With regards to than crane carrying the turbine assembly that collapsed, did anyone else see this frame from the video:

Doesn't that mean that the crane was only rated (werklast -> workload) for loads 15 tonnes lighter than the turbine (16, if the turbine's 75 tons were long tons). I know the engineering rule of thumb is to add in a safety factor of 2 or more, but that shouldn't really be relied on in practice!

In Europe 1 ton = 1000kg, end of story. I agree, they were being incredibly dumb trying to lift more than the crane was certified for. Worse is, it's usually not only written on a tiny placard but spraypainted in enormous idiotproof letters on the crane's structure as well.

The figure one line down "proeflast", meaning test load says 680KN, or 68000kg. "Eigen gew." is eigen gewicht, the crane's own weight.

Tsuru fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Jul 27, 2013

# ¿ Jul 27, 2013 20:44

Tsuru: May 12, 2008

Two halves (upper and lower) are cast and are friction-welded together, the combined unit is then machined.

You can see three remaining fringes from the friction weld remaining on the finished product.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2014 08:33

Tsuru: May 12, 2008

The breather hole is just that, a breather hole to allow the cavity to be ventilated by the sump and prevent corrosion since the kind of plants where steel friction welding is done don't have a controlled environment. Also, they provide pressure relief.

Fun fact: they also use friction welding to create the upper and lower surfaces of the A380's wings, since nobody in the world can reliably cast single slabs of aluminium alloy large enough.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2014 08:47

Tsuru: May 12, 2008

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester posted:

OK but what's with the 2-stroke piston ports?

Weight saving, most probably. You still need the bottom of the piston to stop it from rocking or even tumbling, but everything in between which is not required for strength is dead weight. And since they went to all the aforementioned trouble to create the cavity in the top I'm going to guess that's what it's for.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2014 16:56

Tsuru: May 12, 2008

Collateral Damage posted:

I'm glad I live in a country where the worst thing I might find inside my helmet in way of spiders is a common house spider, which is pretty big and ugly but completely harmless.

Content related to Fire Storm's exploded battery. Not quite as dramatic, from a 2U rackmount UPS.

Lovely. We had an explosive failure (smoke, fire and compuroom inergen bottles triggered) of two of these battery assys in the space of 3 years on the same chassis. The hardware was no more than 3 years old. Looks like you were lucky enough to catch it in its pre-exploded state. We theorized it must had something to do with current imbalances between batteries in the same pack, since they are being charged in parallel and everything is wired up directly without any electronics like diodes or current limiters. Since no battery is created equally a difference in internal resistance between batteries could in theory create weird current distributions.

Which is to say: gently caress APC for refusing to acknowledge that there might be a problem on their end. This is a picture of one of their battery modules that one of the batteries burned a 1" sized hole into, with lots of spontaneous fireworks:

And now we have one of those fridge-sized units waiting to be installed with a new ship. I can't wait until that thing lights itself up.

revmoo posted:

You can tell it's clearly a knockoff battery, nice.

APC actually uses this exact type of battery and just slaps an APC sticker on it.

Tsuru fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Apr 16, 2014

# ¿ Apr 16, 2014 20:11

Tsuru: May 12, 2008

xzzy posted:

Original beetle had two lights, one for pressure, one for alternator function. If either of them lit solid while driving you better stop right loving now. That's how dashboard indicators should work.. only make a fanfare about things that require stopping the car and repairing.

Would probably be hard to document all the billion things that can break on a modern car with two bulbs though. A 60 character display that gave human error messages would be a good option.

Don't most fairly modern cars have this? My car (Saab) bongs and turns on a warning light on in the speedo, and a message on the center console will tell you what's wrong. The only difference in this workflow from an airliner is the lack of a PNF who will pull out the QRH or abnormals checklist and start reading from the top.

There's even two distinct levels just like on aircraft (master caution with a yellow light: light bulb broken or wiper fluid low or somesuch. Master warning with a big red light: ABS failure SO STOP RIGHT loving NOW).

# ¿ Aug 1, 2015 09:23

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 11:39

Tsuru: May 12, 2008

cursedshitbox posted:

Why would that be? for curiosities sake.

Not Shell, but I have heard that Texaco (Chevron) gasoline caused sludging in certain Saab engines (B205, B235) because of certain contaminants, the dealers told people to avoid this brand and of course GM was sued into orbit in the early 2000s to stop telling people this.

The problem was fixed in the end by modifying the sump ventilation system (mod 6), but black sludge remains a very stubborn concern to this day with people who stubbornly keep driving Saab (ha!)

# ¿ Oct 20, 2015 19:41

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