Thread: Dangerous modifications. What’s your mind set?

Originally Posted by harro

Sometimes I think this is more about trades looking after their ’territory’ than actual risk.

Any joe blogs with no formal training can attempt to bleed his brakes, **** it up and cause an accident but domestic electrical wiring is a big no no.

Not that I am encouraging anyone to play with 240v and yes I do my own brakes!

Maybe a ittle from column A but there are more people killed doing their own wiring each year (about 10 a year in Australia but dropped dramatically from the early 2000's) than from bleeding the brakes wrong (can't find a single one, but they would be rolled into the road stats anyway) - if you don't get your brakes right, you know about it before scooting off down the road at 100KPH but when dealing with 240 volts, you usually only get one chance - and you don't know anything is wrong until it bites you and it's too late. 9 out of 10 people who die of electrocution are non electrical workers and the general public.

Originally Posted by Homestar

Maybe a ittle from column A but there are more people killed doing their own wiring each year (about 10 a year in Australia but dropped dramatically from the 70's) than from bleeding the brakes wrong (can't find a single one, but they would be rolled into the road stats anyway) - if you don't get your brakes right, you know about it before scooting off down the road at 100KPH but when dealing with 240 volts, you usually only get one chance - and you don't know anything is wrong until it bites you and it's too late. 9 out of 10 people who die of electrocution are non electrical workers and the general public.

Actually,retired electricians,and electrical engineers also make up a large proportion of people electrocuted.

@zeros I see plastic bags is a thing down under as well What has surprised me the most is that over here in europe people do tend to look after their plastic stuff (at least, western europe). The UK is a bit of a mess but other than that we usually take care of it. So now we have this tax on plastic bags in a part of the world where it does not really add anything usefull, except money in coffers. When in brazil however when you go to a supermarket there is a guy (or girl) per lane that will put your groceries in a plastic bag for you. 4 items in one bag and they take the next one, why? I don't know. IMHO this measure to reduce plastic in the oceans (which IS a good thing mind you!) should be enforced in those countries, not in those where they make hardly any difference...

Onto hybrid vehicles and such, I think we can write a whole topic on this. We have had hybrid's around in large amounts since... I think 2009. The government sponsored these "clean" vehicles and with tax rebates on company cars everyone leased one. The honda civic hybrid for example looks like a decent sedan and is actually quite a nice car when compared to the stereotypically hideous prius. What happend was that your average lease driver came blowing by at full throttle just to get some performance out of the car resulting in fuel consumption figures that were quite laughable. They never leased them for the environment to begin with. When after 4 years these cars came onto the second hand market, they got picked up by russians (or something close by) in droves because they to had a program that incentivized clean cars but over there it would also apply to a second hand car.

The effort and more importantly MONEY involved in cleaning up the total car inventory of the country by making sure that on the top more clean cars came in that would filter down to the general public after the lease period was enormous, the benefits were near zero. These days hardly any priusses are left on our roads, they've become really rare. Honda hybrids are seen more often since they were I guess easier on the eyes? In any case people bought other vehicles as company cars after the hybrids were no longer subsidized. The latest trend has been tesla's. However, from next year on the fiscal rebate on these cars is going to be severely limited and I am willing to bet that the business would will respond by buying audi Q7's and what not again. It was never the environment to begin with, it was cheap.

This leads us nicely into electric vehicles. My information might not be up to date entirely so forgive me if I get some assumptions wrong, however. A tesla is supposed to be a very environmentally friendly vehicle because it drives on electricity. My problem with this premise however is that it costs a HUGE amount of pollution to produce these vehicles, especially the batteries. That is NOT taken into account by those driving or promoting these vehicles. Also, the battery is guaranteed for 8 years but let's say that after 10 years you need to replace one. A car that cost (down here) 100K euro's is by then worth, maybe 25? of that. A new battey pack costs 40K usd. Your car is now "totalled" or a write off. Also, recycling lithium polymer batteries is by far not as effective or efficient as lead acid batteries which has been on a level of something like 98.5% since the seventies! (because there is money in it, industry picked up on that very early)

The short on this: with hopefully the best intentions legislation is passed to help the people and the planet they live on, often enough though the people writing this stuff up are not hindered by any form of knowledge.

For those who got this far thanks for your patience, back to the issue of safety !

Electric vehicles are registered but in accidents they are far more lethal than any of the other vehicles on the market. Yes even LPG or hydrogen vehicles. Shorting a lithium polymer battery causes fires that can smolder on for a very long time, the chemical composition of the battery makes it so that it produces it's own fuel to burn so it does not matter what you do to it. Over here, I kid you not, fire departments don't dare touch a tesla that has crashed, without someone from tesla telling them it is safe to touch it. People have been stuck in crashed cars for hours because it was to dangerous to touch them. One guy died btw when he hit a tree with 160kph on a 50kph road through a town... If you do that in a ferarri or whatever we would never hear the end of it, this was just highlighted as the first real crash of a tesla in this region. In fact, local fire brigades now have invested in large (certified) containers in which they simply submerge a crashed car in for a week so that any change of spontaneous combustion is eliminated.

I am not against electric propulsion, I have been a fan for years because of the torque and smoothness but I do not believe that batteries are a good solution. I prefer hydrogen. The point I was working towards here is that a tesla might be a pretty safe car with crash avoidance and what not but when things DO go wrong they are potentially more lethal than a roobar. Over here it used to be fairly easy to modify an existing car to electric but the rules and regulations have become so extremely complex that a private person will have a hard time complying. So where does this leave us?

Regarding custom ECU's; I have and still am seriously considering replacing all the computers in my P38 with self made units. For one the lucas stuff is notoriously unreliable (though I have not had any big problems yet) and second it is not very water proof Replacing the BECM is quite an easy job, there is a wire from every switch and to every user. Replacing that with any other kind of unit is just a bunch of programming and soldering but that's it. Using an arduino for example would make it trivial to replace when it breaks on the road, a $50 board, plug in laptop or move over the memory card, done. A megasquirt for the rover V8 is really esay since thousands of people have done it. Replacing both fixes the problem of the BECM and ECU needing to communicate with each other for the code that allows it to start. changing just one of the units will cause trouble. However, since everything communicates through the BECM I might need to look into the hevac, EAS and so on. I draw the line definatly at the ABS and airbag unit, they will remain as they are since that is not something I feel one could reliably reproduce.

Am I reckless in doing so? Is it an increased risk? Would anyone blame me for it? IMHO they are all secondary systems, yes even the ECU. if it should go haywire, turning off the ignition will kill all those devices. Also, cars are supposed to have breaks that can stop the car EVEN when an engine is in a runaway state. Local law here stipulates that you can change the output power of your engine up to 40% without having to re-engineer the vehicle. Without changing the brakes that might be... a bit too much already My point here is; someone pointed out that incorrect use of power is what can cause an accident, but as far as I am concerned I think one should take into account what that extra power CAN do if things go wrong. Adjusting brakes and potentially stiffening up the suspension is a mandatory thought exercise as far as I am concerned. Oh, and please implement it when you feel it necessary

Well, this got a bit longer than I had anticipated, sorry, next beer is on me! Let's see if I can get some work done today

Cheers!
-P

Originally Posted by scarry

Actually,retired electricians,and electrical engineers also make up a large proportion of people electrocuted.

Could be, I'm only going off the national stats - it only breaks it down to electrical and non electrical.

Originally Posted by scarry

Actually,retired electricians,and electrical engineers also make up a large proportion of people electrocuted.

I have wired 4 new houses for different electrical engineers. 1 was great, he just couldn't be bothered doing it. The other 3, wow, just wow! They should stay behind the computer and not out in the field!

Originally Posted by Homestar

Maybe a ittle from column A but there are more people killed doing their own wiring each year (about 10 a year in Australia but dropped dramatically from the early 2000's) than from bleeding the brakes wrong (can't find a single one, but they would be rolled into the road stats anyway) - if you don't get your brakes right, you know about it before scooting off down the road at 100KPH but when dealing with 240 volts, you usually only get one chance - and you don't know anything is wrong until it bites you and it's too late. 9 out of 10 people who die of electrocution are non electrical workers and the general public.

Actually, vehicle defects of any kind are way down the list in contributions to accidents (bearing in mind that all accidents have multiple contributors), and I suspect that of vehicle defects only a tiny proportion are the result of home mechanics. The most common (by far) dangerous defect detected in random checks is tyres - either excessively worn or very wrong pressure. Despite this, only a handful of accidents are attributed to tyres.

I have actually seen at least two where the major contributor would almost certainly have been tyres, but I would guess that in both cases they would have been listed as excessive speed. And yes, they were both going a bit fast for the conditions - but should have been OK if the tyres were good. One came to rest upside down, with four bald tyres clearly visible!

Originally Posted by JDNSW

One came to rest upside down, with four bald tyres clearly visible!

Nothing wrong with racing slicks. More rubber in contact with the road surface.

It's when they get down to the steel belts that things get skatey.

Originally Posted by Mick_Marsh

Nothing wrong with racing slicks. More rubber in contact with the road surface.

It's when they get down to the steel belts that things get skatey.

Or a bit of moisture on the road....