If you saw the replays on TV you would see that the tubing broke at the seat not the motor plate. The remaining chassis section that slid in to the sand trap still had the rear motor plate and a majority of the lengths of frame tubing attached to it that broke off at the drivers seat area.

The tubes were broken before the chutes came out before the car hit anything. When the chutes deployed the car ripped itself in half sending the front half in to KB's car and the rear half with JF seated inside in to the left wall.

yesterday was not a good day to be a drag racing fan.
we are soooooooo fortunate this incident left two racing legends
relatively unscathed, all things considered.
regarding the chassis; is it possible there may have been debris
that comprimised the chassis in one area (i.e. only one side), then
as the chutes opened, the force may have 'levered' the chassis,
causing failure on the other side, leading to it's separation??

Me too please.

Despite the cause of the accident, I'm positive the driver's compartment was designed to remain in tact throughout such an incident. I belt my sons into such chassis and wouldn't do so if there were intentional weak spots within their driver's compartments. What happened yesterday was an anomaly to say the very least. More surprising is that John still has legs today.

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"The Doctor"
www.wannaberacing.com

Interesting you should ask Randy. SFI and NHRA have stated my thoughts and experience, along with Don Long and Dave Uyehara (total of 120+ years) have been invalidated. I guess I have nothing to contribute.
I no longer wish to be involved in "the heat treat issue".

Bob

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Bob Meyer Race Cars / San Diego
2005 Our 40th Anniversary

Interesting you should ask Randy. SFI and NHRA have stated my thoughts and experience, along with Don Long and Dave Uyehara (total of 120+ years) have been invalidated. I guess I have nothing to contribute.
I no longer wish to be involved in "the heat treat issue".

Bob

[quote=Randy Goodwin;94973]There's certainly something to THAT statement Randy! In all my years of watching Funny Cars travel down range I've not seen a chassis pull apart quite like that. Also, I've always heard about the breakaway parts of a Top Fuel chassis but I've also NEVER heard of that being applied to a Funny Car. I've always heard the driver was considered 'safer' between the two large tires and that they acted as a 'shock absorber' type of deal.

God bless all the Force's and their teams right now, and let's hope we hear nothing but good things on John's recovery.

"Way back in the day" when we were running front motor top fuel, the idea was, in the event of a serious crash, the motor was supposed to come out of the car and hopfully go some where away from the rest of the car. The driver was presumed to be pretty safe sitting down between the rear tires.

Jay

top fuels used to have motors in front lol

but yes the idea is for the motor chassis to break at the motorplate and in front of the motor so that in the event there is an engine fire they driver isn't sprayed with oil, fuel, fire or pelted with shrapnel from the motor coming apart

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Nostalgia Racing is where it's at folks!!!

Motown Shaker '08

Yes funny cars are designed to "break" just ahead of the motor plate at the "step down". Please read the SFI spec if you doubt that and you'll see why/how. The idea being it would let the motor "get-a-way" in case of a bad crash. For some reason it broke else where something I am sure SFI, NHRA and JFR to name but a few will be looking into.

However instead of everyone second guessing what happened and "playing" chassis builder. Has anyone thought of calling Murf and saying THANK YOU for building a car that would let the driver survive? Granted JFR had input into how the car was built as all crew chiefs have their own ideas. But it was Murf and his "guys" that built the car - without them being as good as they are John would be laying some where else tonight.

To Murf and the gang THANK YOU for being as good as you are!

For without John drag racing at times would be boring to say the least.

like i said in the thread about the crash....nobody builds a better car than Murf so you know something had to go seriously wronf

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Nostalgia Racing is where it's at folks!!!

Motown Shaker '08

Anybody who wouldn't listen to those 3-has NO BUSINESS with anything to do with chassis safety and design!!!!!!!!!

Rapid

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http://WWW.RAPIDRANDY.COM

It was my understanding that 4130 chromoly tubing was already normalized from the mill. How many decades has this tubing met military and aircraft standards? Who's idea was it to fix what was not broken? And if there is a joint cluster problem with heat affected areas would it be feasible to use lower frame rails and main hoops that are two layers sleeved of .058 wall tubing for a total wall thickness approaching .120 wall?

Al; be careful, with that kind of thinking, there might still be one of those "your vote is invalidated" letters coming to you!

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Bob Meyer Race Cars / San Diego
2005 Our 40th Anniversary

I don't have the experience of some of the greats but I was a crew chief on a funny for about 7 years. I have never seen or heard of a chassis coming apart where this one did. And one last time PLEASE, they are not designed to break apart. The motor can come out because it is usually held in place with bolts and aluminum plates.

Stop and think about the stress that a chassis goes through. First you have the torque of the motor trying to twist the chassis. Then you have the torques at the rear trying to turn the rear end at the hit of the throttle. You have harmonic vibrations all the way through the quarter. You have down force being applied to the chassis through the body working against the torque of the motor trying to lift up the chassis. Oh yeah don't forget the negative Gs when the chutes hit.

The very fact that we have not seen this till now says that we can thank our lucky stars that there are really good chassis guys out there. Will The Eric Medlin Project and Ford and all the rest of the people figure out what happened??? I believe so. Perhaps they can develope a testing ptogtam to spot trouble before it begins. Give then some time to work their magic.

Just one man's opinion.
jim