And you're going to give me a full refund when I send it back undamaged?

I have no B-body. In fact, I dare say my current subframe is more substantial than any of the B-body stuff but that's what you get with an Imperial.


If you make a good product and it performs better than the factory piece and any of the other guys then you would stand to profit from the test.

I planned on gathering the results, doing a comprehensive write-up and submitting it to the magazines.

Yes, with a 100% restocking fee....

CR

This leads to 1 of three initial thoughts.

1) Your company doesn't have enough inventory to take one off the shelf for a relatively short period of time.

2) Your company is in need of cash in a bad way.

3) Your company is not confident that it's product will compare favorably to the stock unit.

...not that I always agree with how he supports his claims, but in his defense I don't think many companies will just send parts out for any form of "in my garage destructive testing".

Your test could be skewed, if you know it or not, and negatively represent their product.

You could return that part, seemingly unscathed after trying to twist it, when it could actually be slightly deformed. Then what? He's out the part and can't do anything with it.

If it was returned with the same integrity as before but now has bumps and scratches on it from testing, it then has to be sent back out and recoated/fixed before reselling it.





I'm sure I could come up with a few other reasons why I wouldn't necessarily do this as a supplier, but I would likely be able to supply an alternative input to your test to consider.


Such as:

FEA and fatigue analysis that compare a stock K to the redesign before tooling.

In-house testing that was performed to make sure the new part met or exceeded the stock K-member in a variety of situations, engineering validation.

Claiming things "are better", or "were fixed" wouldn't fly in my field, we need numbers to backup most everything we do, or we didn't accomplish anything.

It always sounds like someone at XV at some point paid good money for excellent tests. Either the data was never passed down to back up the designs or they were just stuck on a rig for pretty pictures.

Goody, I went through that chain of thought too. My post was simply the first three things that went through my mind as I read his reply.

Goody points out a lot of valid points, most of which, dare I say all, are not available from any aftermarket K member maker and most don't have it to share anyway because their parts were not professionally engineered.

I see many anecdotal bandwagoneers claiming "it handles like it's on rails" or, "I never had a problem with it". Both statements tell me they didn't have a problem because they wouldn't know what a problem was if it put them into the wall anyway.

You want to sell me an aftermarket K member your selling point had better be more than "it's lighter" or "more room". Neither of which is a selling point to a competently informed person looking for anything other than straight line handling a quarter mile at a time.

From 2006

http://www.lateral-g.net/forums/showthread.php4?t=3598&page=2





It sounds like at one point there was some information to share or at least be able to show some graphs, screen shots, something of what was accomplished. I'd guess this information didn't quite make it through the ownership change, quite a shame if that is what happened.

Companies would get a lot more of my money if they could say "look, look at our testing and validation. Our system will get you a 32% stiffer chassis than stock"or whatever the situation might be.


The market is either people that have the money to just by the most expensive parts that the next guy has, or the people who are chasing peak levels of performance for their hard earned dollar. The pretty pictures and aluminum parts will get the first bunch to bite, but it'll take more to hedge out the competition for the ones chasing attainable and validated performance gains.

" 4-post tests were plotted against 250 production vehicles for comparison" XV



"It sounds like at one point there was some information to share or at least be able to show some graphs, screen shots, something of what was accomplished. I'd guess this information didn't quite make it through the ownership change"

I would not be so sure that info or a real comparison ever took place in the first place. I would first assume most client based testing labs need to have confidentially clauses, so where did the data come from for 250 similar? production vehicles?

Since we don't yet know, we maybe can add and to be fair:

4) lack of faith in the testing process

5) No inherent benefit of obtaining/publishing any results

6/ Its personal

Multimatic did the testing for the chassis stuff if I recall...maybe they still have what ever data was gotten from the testing ?

That info is probably proprietary and thusly not freely given. Many companies would have non-disclosure clauses so people could not duplicate it. Tim

Someone paid dearly for that testing. And it's complete understandable and reasonable they would not give it away for free.

No such thing as a free lunch, brother.

Lead, follow or get out of the way.

I understand all of that.
Back when the info was first released I knew that someone had dumped a metric butt ton of money into developing a product with a very limited market. Good product or not, it was a business doomed to bankruptcy.

What I don't see on that is the very basic testing info. Change one piece at a time and see what you get. Changing more than one thing can give you misleading data.
As a package the products make for a nice chassis. What do they do alone?

"We have also had them run models to ensure the components designed are strong enough for the intended application - for example our K-Member design was evaluated for impact and tearout loads for the lower control arms - and we will beat the crap out of it at the track during testing as well."

Its all coming back to me, this is the welded alum K member? Do I also remember ground smooth welds? If either or both conditions are true, unless excessively over designed, which was not apparent by posted pictures, the one unknown being material thickness, and it members were in the .375"+ thickness range, and all welds were full penetration, the K member would have a very limited fatigue life. I don't see how an aftermarket niche supplier could afford fatigue testing, and the only option with the top two conditions of welded alum/ground welds, would eventually lead to failure. It those decisions were made, I would question the expertise of every other design solution they offered very carefully. I have made this very point when it was being marketed. I would like to have a XV K in my hands to better understand its design, so some of the above is just conjecture. Bottom line, welded alum on a suspension is a big no no with continuously reversed loads in a non redundant critical design member.

Read above, then you should know

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

So either be happy or forge ahead aka,

Lead, follow or get out of the way.

This is why I don't try and discuss these things in here, somebody with a google diploma always pops up

There's destructive testing, and non destructive testing... Everything that was produced was 3D modeled, which means they also ran testing on the models within the software.

If I had the time, (I don't) I could run a few tests on our K within Solidworks....

That and the fact that when you know what the load will be on a given part, and you know what the yield strength of the material is, you put in a factor of something like 1.5 times what you calculated as the yield for safety, and you come up with a the correct design.

This isn't the dark ages, there's very little trial and error these days...


And the main reason I don't give away parts to be tested is that because liabilities I couldn't resell it..

Couple that with the fact that the testing is not being done by a professional company noted for this type of testing, to me, the data would not be valid...

But, I would be happy to sell you a $2000 K frame and have it!!!!

CR

Can't argue with that, but hey this is.....Moparts.

1. Google diploma? Really?
2. I'm pretty sure my entire above reply was focused on the fatigue life of welded alum members, I don't see that you addressed that point one iota. Typical response, go after the messenger instead of the message.
3. Anyone who doesn't understand alum welded highly loaded structures have a finite life span, should stay away from cars & airplanes.
4. The problem with "professional" testing, they are getting paid to gather a positive/expected result for those signing the check, and they usually do, and if not, the tests aren't released/published. Testing methods can help achieve that goal.
5. "feets" implies I don't google enough, you suggest too much. tough crowd.