Quote:
Originally Posted by AtomicLabMonkey
Weld heat affected zones and thread grooves can be pretty large stress risers. Now I'm not a failure analysis/fracture mechanics expert by any means, just a regular ole' mechanical engineer, but IMO that tubing just visually looks fairly thin to handle both. I think it would have to be some pretty high yield alloy to have been properly designed to handle the loads seen on track with sticky tires.
Fatigue is a funny thing... a part that passes high static or even dynamic stress tests a few times can fail eventually when subjected to a much lower load applied repeatedly for X number of cycles.
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+1
The Tein SuperRace coilovers I have have much heavier duty lower brackets... I was actually surprised at how different they are compared to the Flex's.
That said, this is the first and only Flex failure I've ever heard about... considering how many units are out there, and how many people track/abuse them, I'd be willing to bet this is more of a quality issue rather than a design issue. The Flex's seem to hold up pretty well or we'd hear more stories like this one. But that said, take a look at your bits on a regular basis just to make sure you don't have a "bad" set.
That guy's failure didn't happen instantly. Surely he would have noticed something weeks before the catastrophic failure had he been watching.