'96 Legacy Outback

my statement was that vehicles shouldn't flip just because of a flat. ever.

not only is it a perfectly predictable and "normal" operating condition, it's a condition whose math is well known and that can be designed for.

the only reason they flip is because people like you have been brainwashed into thinking it's the tire's fault, thus manufacturers have been able to get away without recourse selling you cheap crap, even though they /know/ they're selling vehicles which will kill you.

what you've just described is not what you experience driving on normal urban roads and freeways - the terrain where these vehicles have been flipping and killing people. you are correct that dig-in will flip any vehicle, but that is not the issue here. and it doesn't excuse vehicles with known instability issues not having crush-proof cabins.

they're popularly termed "magnesium", but you'll more likely find they're an aluminum alloy with some magnesium content - just for corrosion resistance if nothing else - magnesium oxidizes very rapidly. and if it had reached auto-ignition temperature, you wouldn't have molten metal on the driveway, you'd have a smoking crater.

The guy I bought it from reports a 'clunking' from the right rear; a quick inspection showed nothing wrong with the shocks, although it was raining and when I say "quick" I *MEAN* QUICK! A shake of the car both sides rear revealed no noises...

I fixed one of the "Stage 2" leaks with this:

!! It WORKED!!!!!!!!!

My 2.2 has the blow hole on the exhaust side... :(

Well, the car is rusting badly, and if I do run it this year, it's likely it's last. It only has 147,000 on it, and I really like it, but with my "stable" of cars, comes time to let it go. I'll probably grind, scrape, sand, bondo and paint for about $150 and run it one more time. Has a brand new radiator ($18 on eBay!!!!) and runs real good. '89 Coupe. Comfortable as anything else I have had. Or more...

Supra gets all the Big Money. The others (including the '89) are Work Cars, and I decided I needed a nice hatch like the '89 or a Sta Wag. So, the Outback is up next.

Maybe if I quit this job I'll stick with the Scion, the Supra, my van (for band stuff) and a S00B of one sort or another. I'd really like an Impreza wagon, but the outback is just right for my bass amp!

I did the MM treatment in 2007 and ran it from Feb 2007 to April, then Nov

2007-April 2008, but didn't run it last winter because of the rust. Still not leaking!

Perhaps I have been brainwashed and am drinking the koolaid. I am with you on the fact that cars can be, and should be, designed to be stable enough to not roll over if they have a flat. I think that I put more weight on the influence of the ratio of CG height to track width than you do. I think we can both agree that it would be more challenging to produce a vehicle with the ratio like the explorer had, and also a nearly zero propensity to roll over. I think we disagree in how challenging that would be. I am under the impression that you think it is easier than I think it is. Perhaps I am accepting the ratio that they went with too easily by justifying it with claims that lowering the vehicle makes it less off-road-worthy. Maybe that is one of the things that you'd change in the design change necessary to have made that vehicle acceptable. I don't know. I think we are nitpicking points now, and the others are probably sick of reading it.

It was a magnesium alloy engine. You are right that there is Al in there. However, the particular alloy used by Porsche and VW was AS21, which is about 97% Mg, and less than 2% Al. In my admittedly limited experience, I've seen that most Mg alloys have less than 10% Al. One of my professors used to be the president of SAE, and when I told him the story about the Porsche going up he commented that it was rare for the old VW engines to go up in flames like that, but posited that it may have been easier if it were very clean. I didn't ask for a clarification on that reasoning, but I'm sure that since the engine had just been rebuilt, it was clean. Perhaps gunk insulates well enough to keep temps down? I don't know.

The fire department came and tried water, but that didn't work. They then said that they couldn't put it out since they didn't have the foam necessary for the situation. In the end, all they could do was shoot water at the tree that it was parked near to prevent the tree from going up in flames. The tree still lost all its leaves on that side all the way up. (70 to 80 feet)

When all was said and done there was a piece of metal embedded in the driveway. I could see how you might have read what I typed earlier as a molten puddle formed on the driveway. Let me clarify. The hot asphalt was soft enough that a random metal part of uncertain metalurgy sank into the driveway and once the car was towed away and the part revealed, it didn't want to move again. It was pretty well embedded into the driveway.

Have a good one, Bill

it's not hard to design for stability - it simply costs a little more money to implement. just like designing to prevent cabin crush is just a matter of spending a buck or so on the extra material.

the selling price of the vehicle was ~$30k regardless of suspension, so frod did their famous cost/benefit analysis of lawsuit payouts vs. projected profitability and decided they'd rather kill a few people and pay out to the families of the bereaved who had an aggressive enough lawyer rather than make less money manufacturing a vehicle they knew would not be a problem. it's only when congress started to pussy-foot about with "investigation" that frod decided to change their game. they did two things - fire nasser, the guy whose decision it was, and bring out the 93 exploder with the updated rear suspension in the middle of

1. yeah, frod knew /exactly/ what they were doing, they just decided to kill people rather than make safe but less profitable vehicles.

well, those characters may be cast into a block, but i'd need convincing that it's an alloy number and not a coincidence for the model number. if i saw "a48" in a cast iron block, it's a big leap to assume it's specific to the gray iron casting alloy, even though there is one.

those engines "go up" all the time because of the gas leak problem, but it's /extremely/ rare for auto-ignition of the actual metal to occur. i doubt it happened.

sounds like a gas fire. you use foam for gas fires - water spreads the flames.

Here's a better link

Happens all the time. Most of the newer vehicles have magnesium alloy parts that will ignite. VERY easy to tell what is burning because it burns bright white and if you dump water on it the fire will actually get worse.

Depends on how much gas and how you apply the water. If you use a solid stream nozzle the fuel and fire will get pushed around. If you use a good nozzle with fog you can put out most fuel fires real quick.

The pavement damage happens quite a bit at vehicle fires. Vehicle fires on newer vehicle get a LOT hotter than on older vehicles, all the plastics really crank up the heat. However many newer ones do have magnesium alloys that burn.

We had a Ford P/U about 6 months ago and the mount casting on the front of the block caught. This was on a dirt road and when we got the fire out there was a nice puddle of aluminum in the road. Only parts of the truck left was the box and back half of the cab.

When I said, "go up in flames like that.", I meant a real magnesium fire. He was saying that it was rare the magnesium caught fire, but it was easier for it to happen if the block was clean. Don't know the reasoning on this one though.