>Dear Graham,
>
>On what do you base your opinion that the seat belt anchor plates are too
>small? The plates in G-KWIP did not rip out of the composite during your
>accident.
>
>Kind regards
>
>Andy Draper
>Technical Director
Andy,
Maybe I am not clear enough in my opinion remarks. What did I say that
prompts your question? There would be more margin for error if they were a
bit bigger which might have helped with some of the earlier Classics.
Certainly I found it difficult to maintain edge clearance on G-KWIP.
Incidentally I do think the seat belts should include a distance piece to
allow the strap attach brackets to rotate freely as they do in most cars.
Seat belt angle is different for different people.
I can't remember exactly now whether the plate pulled out or not but
Isaac's lap strap attach did fail. I think the whole structure failed in
compression. I was lucky, lighter weight I guess. Isaac was not so lucky.
Point of interest to you. David has been doing some tests with boiling
coolant and radiator hose. He has found that the hose takes a permanent set
at around 150 deg C, this explains why our hose was a non standard
diameter. 150 C represents about 3 or 4 bar pressure. (memory failing
again) This was enough to burst the collector bottle which IMHO must have a
bigger breather hole. The hose at the same time started to expand and
eventually let go. Once boiling starts and the hose expands the sequence
becomes irreversible, the hose gets weaker, expands quicker and quicker and
explodes. This experiment is easily repeatable.
AAIB have accepted that their interpretation was not really accurate and
are going to write an addendum. We will let you have a copy of our notes as
soon as they are written. We think it is important for everyone.
Graham
Graham
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