[DeTomaso] Pantera near disaster

[Ken Green]

Most of these parts have been on a car for almost 2 years with no problems, including driving from Santa Maria to Reno last year.  The failure described by Boyd appears to have had nothing to do with the billet carrier, CV half shafts, etc.  It appears that either the wheel studs were defective, or they were damaged.  The hub and bearing assemblies were off the shelf parts and the shop that put all this together makes similar parts for off road race vehicles, and if anything, the parts are over designed.  
 
Mike, if you are skeptical, can you please provide more than your unsupported criticism, and the carriers were not designed by "whittling away" at some aluminum.  They were designed by someone with decades of real racing experience from the Baja 1000 to Bonneville who has forgotten more than most of us will every know about making tough suspension parts.  I would agree that the carriers could probably be optimized to a lighter weight, but from all indications, they are much stronger than necessary.  If anything, the failure that Boyd experienced shows the carriers and the hub and bearing assemblies (other than the studs) held up to an overstress condition when the wheel was starting to thrash around.  
 
The big advantage with these parts is that Boyd will have a new hub and bearing assembly next week that he can bolt on.  And, these are the parts on virtually all cars made in the past 20 years. 
 
Ken
 
 
 

--- On Sat, 8/21/10, MikeLDrew at aol.com <MikeLDrew at aol.com> wrote:


From: MikeLDrew at aol.com <MikeLDrew at aol.com>
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Pantera near disaster
To: boyd411 at gmail.com, detomaso at realbig.com
Date: Saturday, August 21, 2010, 4:15 PM



In a message dated 8/21/10 15 56 52, boyd411 at gmail.com writes:


> The alignment tech claims he did not take the wheels off so I
> have no way of knowing  what the cause was.  If anyone has any suggestions 
> I
> would be interested in hearing  any theories.
> 

How about dramatically underengineered and wholly unnecessary replacements 
for perfectly good stock parts?   I would never, ever take a chance with 
ever running those new hubs assemblies even before this episode, but now?   One 
would have to be suicidal to do so, I think.   Read what you wrote:

" I could have been killed or the wheel could have come
completely off and the damage could easily have been well into the 
thousands
of dollars."

I have been very skeptical about this whole project from the start; when I 
looked at the parts, they seemed pretty, but there doesn't seem to be any 
true science behind them.   To me, it looks like somebody just started with a 
bunch of material and started whittling until the pieces that were left 
resembled Pantera parts.

Now, I can't honestly claim that I know the level of engineering analysis 
that went into the design of the stock components, and I will admit that the 
stock axles leave a bit to be desired, in the long run.   But there's no 
question that the stock components are superior, by orders of magnitude, to the 
home-made, cobbled-up affair that nearly killed you today.

Curious--what does the other side look like at the moment?

Mike (SO glad you learned your lesson the (relatively) easy way!)
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