ok first of all, all you guys out there who fly the "I dont wear my seatbelt because my brothers uncles mailman was in an accident and not wearing it saved his life, I dont want the gov't telling me what to do, blah blah blah"
STFU! Because at the very least I would be in the hospital with very serious injuries, or MUCH WORSE right now if I didnt have it on morning.
My cousins and aunts and uncles came to our house for early easter dinner and for my birthday. My younger cousin (14) likes cars and trucks and stuff and I always have a fun time with him so we took my offroad beetle out for a little drive. We were cruising down our road all of a sudden the beetle kinda lurched to the right. I think a tire might have gone soft? The steering on it is so vauge and has ZERO on-center feel (basically steers like a fork lift) so its pretty much impossible to do any sort of emergency steering corrections...that and for some reason turning left results in a quicker ratio than turning right???
And no shocks + SOA....
started sliding sideways at 45+mph on the sandy pavement and all I could yell to my cousin who was in the passenger seat was "hang on keep your hands in!". The windows were down and my aunt lost her arm that way, she flipped her 4runner and put her arm out the window as it rolled...so that was basically the last thing I could think of before we got airborne.
I dont really remember the whole thing, it happened so fast. I just remember it getting really quiet/the howling tires stopping for a split second and then next thing I knew we were upright down in a ditch.
Caught a rock on the edge of the road, got airborne for a second, basically landed right directly on the a-pillar/passenger side windshield frame and rolled 5 times down the road before landing upright in a ditch on the side of the road.
Engine was still running fine (its a GM LSx, why wouldnt it be still running fine duh) when we landed and no fluids spilled anywhere. Battery was anchored down properly, no shit went flying, which was good.
But it is completely totaled. This was not a "crawling up some rocks and flopped over" accident...this was a ford-exploder-firestone accident.
tie-rod is bent in half, frame is completely twisted along its horizontal axis, leaf springs twisted, shackles bent in half, rear pinion hit the (cast aluminum) oil pan, driveshaft smashed the tranny pan. Body is totaled. Steering column is really loose (I held onto it the whole time, which is the right thing to do). The hood and left front fender are still good!
But we are OK...little shaken up and jumpy, my cousin had a cut from the glass, and I hit my head on something and Im a little sore, might have been the cage, but im fine. As I said, the whole thing was a blur, I just remember thinking "well this is it...nothing I can do now...".
Dragged it back to my house with the dmax, chewed up my nice swampers, and the driveshaft/pinion spinning broke a hole in the oil pan. Im going to be replacing it with a oil pan from a corvette or camaro or something lower-profile than the truck oil pan that was on the motor originally.
The 4-point simpson harnesses were perfect, im glad I went overboard when fabbing up the anchor points for the harnesses.
The cage is pretty tweaked (after we got airborne the full weight of the beetle landed all on the passenger side a-pillar) but it did its job of preventing roof collapse very well IMO. Its nowhere near a full cage, but if it wasnt there the roof would have been pancaked and we would be in the hospital, or worse. We still had all of our headroom inside the cabin when we landed, but when I rebuild it im definitely going to do a full-all-out cage this time.
Im mad, really shitty now that its just getting nice outside and I was really ready to do some wheeling, but at least we were able to unbuckle our harnesses, open the doors and walk away......
Ill post up pics in a minute. But yeah, wear your seat belt. The cabin on the beetle is so small that flopping all around unbelted with the windows open could have been nasty.
Ben
STFU! Because at the very least I would be in the hospital with very serious injuries, or MUCH WORSE right now if I didnt have it on morning.
My cousins and aunts and uncles came to our house for early easter dinner and for my birthday. My younger cousin (14) likes cars and trucks and stuff and I always have a fun time with him so we took my offroad beetle out for a little drive. We were cruising down our road all of a sudden the beetle kinda lurched to the right. I think a tire might have gone soft? The steering on it is so vauge and has ZERO on-center feel (basically steers like a fork lift) so its pretty much impossible to do any sort of emergency steering corrections...that and for some reason turning left results in a quicker ratio than turning right???
And no shocks + SOA....
started sliding sideways at 45+mph on the sandy pavement and all I could yell to my cousin who was in the passenger seat was "hang on keep your hands in!". The windows were down and my aunt lost her arm that way, she flipped her 4runner and put her arm out the window as it rolled...so that was basically the last thing I could think of before we got airborne.
I dont really remember the whole thing, it happened so fast. I just remember it getting really quiet/the howling tires stopping for a split second and then next thing I knew we were upright down in a ditch.
Caught a rock on the edge of the road, got airborne for a second, basically landed right directly on the a-pillar/passenger side windshield frame and rolled 5 times down the road before landing upright in a ditch on the side of the road.
Engine was still running fine (its a GM LSx, why wouldnt it be still running fine duh) when we landed and no fluids spilled anywhere. Battery was anchored down properly, no shit went flying, which was good.
But it is completely totaled. This was not a "crawling up some rocks and flopped over" accident...this was a ford-exploder-firestone accident.
tie-rod is bent in half, frame is completely twisted along its horizontal axis, leaf springs twisted, shackles bent in half, rear pinion hit the (cast aluminum) oil pan, driveshaft smashed the tranny pan. Body is totaled. Steering column is really loose (I held onto it the whole time, which is the right thing to do). The hood and left front fender are still good!
But we are OK...little shaken up and jumpy, my cousin had a cut from the glass, and I hit my head on something and Im a little sore, might have been the cage, but im fine. As I said, the whole thing was a blur, I just remember thinking "well this is it...nothing I can do now...".
Dragged it back to my house with the dmax, chewed up my nice swampers, and the driveshaft/pinion spinning broke a hole in the oil pan. Im going to be replacing it with a oil pan from a corvette or camaro or something lower-profile than the truck oil pan that was on the motor originally.
The 4-point simpson harnesses were perfect, im glad I went overboard when fabbing up the anchor points for the harnesses.
The cage is pretty tweaked (after we got airborne the full weight of the beetle landed all on the passenger side a-pillar) but it did its job of preventing roof collapse very well IMO. Its nowhere near a full cage, but if it wasnt there the roof would have been pancaked and we would be in the hospital, or worse. We still had all of our headroom inside the cabin when we landed, but when I rebuild it im definitely going to do a full-all-out cage this time.
Im mad, really shitty now that its just getting nice outside and I was really ready to do some wheeling, but at least we were able to unbuckle our harnesses, open the doors and walk away......
Ill post up pics in a minute. But yeah, wear your seat belt. The cabin on the beetle is so small that flopping all around unbelted with the windows open could have been nasty.
Ben
