Trauma (Car Only)
 

This is what happens when you break a ball joint at speed
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This was at Pueblo Motorsports Park yesterday. Fortunately, it was coming out of turn 7, the slowest part of the track. So I was only doing about 60mph or so. There were no other cars around me. And there was a nice spot of dirt of slow down in. Thirty seconds earlier I was doing 135 mph, and braking hard for turn 1. If it had broken then........

The car took a hard left into the dirt. I had to fight to keep it straight, I was worried it would get sideways and flip over. Once in the dirt, the drag from the tire turned the car to the right as as I slid to a stop, directly in front of the turn 8 flag stand. All the safety equipment worked as advertised. No fuss, no drama. Easy to fix. We used a cargo strap to hold it together, and drove it onto the trailer, and then into my garage.

As we were unloading the car, I heard the safety guys radio talking about heavy impact in turn 4, and someone was injured. I was thinking that I should quit what we were doing, and have the safety guy take me over there to help out. Moments later the ambulance guys are standing next to me! :) http://forums.nasarockymountain.com/...foro/clear.png He asked me, "Do you know where you are?". I said, "Yes".

Glad nobody was hurt.
Much safer than racing motorcycles, which I used to do.

So.....after having a bit of time to contemplate are you going to quit racing?

Absolutely not! When you're racing, stuff happens. Unlike a motorcycle, I have a full cage to protect me.

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I tried to get the bolt out of the good one. But it was in too tight. Maybe they're over torqued?

Not a good design, IMO. I did not take them apart before installation to see what it was. This is something I have never seen before, and did not know it existed. Had I known what it was, I would not have installed it.

Just for fun, I'm sending the broken part and the good one to someone who can do a microscopic analysis to see why it failed.

I'm going back to a stock arm, and stock ball joints. But I will install spherical bearings in place of the rubber bushings. Spherical Bearings 1/4/18 ? Racing the Exocet