I changed the front brake pads on the S-10 this week. I got an up-close look at the frame and I think I need to Red-tag the vehicle. The corrosion is that bad.
The vehicle is a 2002 with 86k miles on the odometer and in my semi-expert estimation the vehicle is not safe to drive down the road due to lack of crashworthiness.
I say "semi-expert" because I used to dabble in the dark-art of crashworthiness.
One of the back-of-envelop calculations was the Thornton-McGee axial crush force calcs. The formula was developed empirically. Beau-coup rectangular sections were fabricated and then crushed in a Tinius-Olsen machine that recorded the crush-force through the event.
Notably, most of the parameters, the material strength, the width of the section and the height of the section were raised to the 0.33 power. That is, doubling the yield strength of the material only increased the average crush strength (and the structure's ability to absorb energy) by 26%. If memory serves, the only parameter with an exponent over 1.0 was the material thickness with an exponent of 1.7. Doubling the thickness of the steel increased the section's ability to absorb energy by a factor of 3.
So loss of thickness is devastating to a closed section's ability to soak up energy.
Furthermore, there were many cracks in the frame, some over 6" long, effectively turning portions of the box-section into an open section. An open section "cripples" and its ability to absorb energy drops to zero after that.
It would give me satisfaction if the motor (2.2l) and transmission were used to keep somebody else's vehicle on the road. Drop me a line in comments if you have a need.
Brass
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A friend whose husband passed away about five years ago is still sorting through his things.
She gave me a gift of a bag of 1X fired brass knowing that I had uses for such artifacts. These recovered projectiles were in the bag. I am sure there are stories...
110 450BM cases, 23 -06 cases, 12 7 Rem Mag, 12 .243 Win, onesie-twosie of others.
I have totally "used up" 3 S10 Blazers delivering mail. Frame rust was never an issue, but cracks are common near the where the front suspension is attached to the frame.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid in the 70s Dad told me about a co-worker with a profitable side hustle. The guy would use his vacation time going into the mountain states and buy up used cars with good frames and bodies and worn out engines which he would bring down to the midwest where he would by up rust heaps with good engines. Then he would transfer the good engines into the good bodies and sell at a significant profit. What I was told was that the thin, dry mountain air preserved the rest of the car but made the engine wear out where the thick moist lowland air that caused body and frame cancer protected the engine.
ReplyDeleteI worked with a couple of guys, Larry and Jim by name, who swapped out Oldsmobile diesel engines and replaced them with Oldsmobile V8 gas engines from junk cars.
Delete$500 if you supplied the engine. $1000 if they had to find one for you.
They got very, very good at swapping them out. They could do one-a-night. It was a great gig for a couple of years.
Hard working men. I don't begrudge them a penny of what they earned.
I heard of people buying vehicles with bad engines from south of the Ohio River where salt is rarely used on the roads and buying rusted out heaps of the same model/year in the north and doing what you described.
Some of it comes down to economics. How cheaply can you drive down to Tennessee (for instance) and back? What is your time worth?