Would you fix this???

No pics, story too old, but I was thinking about it today.
Years ago, I was talking to a Harley guy about a trip he took up north. He was pulling a trailer with his Harley, and had had numerous breakages of the hitch and tonque.
Seems he had built himself a swingarm-mounted hitch, based on his own design, and, like it would, it broke many times before he got someone to weld it up strong enough to take the abuse; after that, the trailer tonque promptly broke.

We've all seen similar dodgy "engineerin'", and a lot of us are listed in the HAMB pages among other club help lists.

My question is: would you fix an obviously poorly engineered setup, one that was likely to fail due to the completely inadequate design, or would you decline??

I would refuse to repair. Yes, even for an out-of-stater. I would offer to build a proper substitute, if it were something that I was comfortable building as well as experienced in building.

I'm just uncomfortable being involved with something that I feel could cause an accident or other incident.

Comments??

Cosmo

 

i think what you said nails it on the head.At the shop i work at we turn away work that is cobbed together unless they want to fix it correctly

 

Recently I was asked to make some brackets for a 2wd chevy with a lift kit on the front end. It is a pretty serious kit, 20" of suspension travel, king coil overs, triple bypass shocks.

Basically what the builder of the kit did was this:

the bumpsteer was a problem with the stock location of the steering rack. Instead of lowering the rack (aka not a "bolt on" kit anymore), they built brackets which attach to the end of the steering rack which lowers the effective mounting point of the tie rod.

A tie rod is a two-force member, so it has no moment (bending force) at the rack, only a vertical and horizontal force. Now with the lowering bracket, the force where the tie rod mounts is the same, but the forces on the end of the rack now have a bending component. Not to mention that it is cyclical, changing direction when you steer left and right.

The bracket was made out of SS (also a mistake), and the mounting to the rack further complicated the problem. The rack has 22mm female thread. So the bracket was made with a male thread to screw into the rack, the threads were cut instead of rolled (an added stress riser).

The end result was a cyclical bending force on a component made of an inferior material (for the application- 316 ss), with the bending force acting right on a stress riser.

It broke.

I was asked to make a new one out of 4130. I said no, the rack should be moved and really wouldn't cost that much more to do.
They had someone else make it.

The short answer is no.

 

We turn work away when it comes to safety in our shop. It's our way or the highway. Nobody needs work bad enough to get sued over somebody else's BS. Would you want YOUR name attached to it when it leaves your hands. That's it becomes once you touch it. Yours. What is your reputation worth????????? IMHO of course.
Rod

 

ask yourself if you want this guy crusin down the highway next to you and your kids in some piece mealed POS