hi joey!

danielsmom · 02-13-2003, 03:49 AM

here i am joey!

Joeybagodonuts · 02-13-2003, 01:36 PM

hi momma! holy crap you posted! made my day! little hint, most times post under general chat, this is the tech section, but of course i do check here every so often.
guys, this is my "adopted" mom.
as her signature says her son daniel passed away in a terrible saturn accident, many of you have heard me talk about it. i met her and mike, her husband when i saw her plea for assistance on rec.auto.saturns. there were actually people flaming her saying crap like oh, its NOT the saturns fault.
well guess what? after many trips to tennesse, it WAS the saturns fault, poorly placed fuel lines, pcm DID NOT shut down upon impact.
it was a terrible terrible situation. we wasted almost a year with a lawyer who thought he knew more then the "expert' (me) and actually was telling people how he was an expert on airbags so thats what he wanted to pursue, that the airbags didnt go off! (theres lots of other details but we wont make momma endure re -reading what we went through with this joker) well gang, lets raise our hands, how many people have an airbag in a 92 sc? huh huh huh? none, cause they DIDNT have airbags, the car was burned beyond recogition but from what was left of the frame of the steering wheel i told him from day ONE, this car was NOT equiped with bags, he insisted cause the insurance paperwork said it did, they were wrong.
as i poured my heart into this case me and the morgans (cindy and mike) became very close, we now visit each other on a regular basis and they have been to our house, we went to theirs for thanksgiving and they are coming back down to our wedding so those of you coming will get to meet some people that are VERY special to me.
daniel was a special guy, as i worked on the case, without telling cindy of course, in the back of my mind i kept thinking, man, hes 18, if theres ANY drugs, alcohol, ANYTHING in his system our case is shot (we didnt get the doctors report and autopsy until well into the case, as the lawyer wasted tme with the airbags BS, my personal feelings were his firm was to scared to take on the possible multi million dollar expense of taking on the mighty gm) when i reads the autopsy it made my heart feel good that there was NOTHING in daniel, he WAS one of the good ones, a normal happy 18 year old with his whole life ahead of him.
since were dredging up the past im gonna take this opurtunity to one more time warn ALL s series owners, this can be ANYONE of you. we found cases where someone simply fell into a pot hole and had the same results but got out of the car in time, if you look under your car, in front of the drivers side rear tire, see that rubber line marked fuel? well, simply put its a time bomb
all car makers do at least one of three things, many car makers do all three.
one, they use steel lines
2, they run the fuel line inside the uni body
3, they cover it with a steel grate.
saturn does none of this, instead, leaving it exposed for god only knows why, it cost a beuatiful young man his life, and how many others? we dont know.
this case made its way all the way to the nbc investigators, if we found any cases in new york they were going to air a nationwide broadcast on some bigshot show like nightline, we worked closely with them for months but could not dig up a case in the new york area (they wanted something linked to the geographical area.)
daniels car went off the road, passenger side tilted down an embankment. as it bounced and he tried to regain control it hit ruts and the fuel lines made contact with the road. this is painful to rewrite....
the car went apx another 300 feet, THEN, and this is very important and techs KNOW this, it made contact and hit a stump, hard, ANY fuel injected car due to the high pressure required to run fuel injection is mandatory that the pcm is SUPPOSED to shut down the flow of fuel, if this worked daniel may very well be with us today. it didnt. the pcm continued to feed the fire, in the words of fireman and witness on the scene it was like a flame thrower coming out of the back seat.
many of you like to hot rod, we all do, i know, the reason im posting the details besides so you know exactly who this person is and what she means to me, is in the hopes that you all THINK, think for a moment, look under your car.
heres another scenario, we all know the affintys are known to blow out, say you get a blow out in the drivers side rear, car goes down, makes contect, mashs the fuel line, sparks are flying from the road, since its only a blow out and no accident the car wont detect an impact and shut down the pcm, guess what? your in trouble.
i have seen allot of things in my career as a both a restoration and court appointed expert, this fuel line placement is one of the dumbest moves ive ever encountered and affects EVERY s series saturn!
ok, so know you all know who cindy is, to me it would be very special if you all gave her a warm welcome. keep daniels memory alive y BEING AWARE, drive carefully, many of you are young with your whole lifes ahead of you. it would pain me greatlt to come bring flowers to your grave as i do with daniels.
please show my adopted mom that saturn people DO care.

Joeybagodonuts · 02-13-2003, 01:46 PM

theres one other thing in think the group should know.
many of you beleive saturns are "safe cars" saturn did not get good rating until 1994 when they added the second airbag to the passenger side, before that their rating was medicore at best.
now i know many of you are going to say how you had an accident with a saturn and came out ok, well, thats great, tell you why, saturns are very light, when two objects collide the lighter of the two mass's will tend to "bounce" away from the impact. this happens mane times in saturn accidents.
but what i wanted to bring up was during the investigation of this case we found out there ARE NO CRASH RATINGS ON EARLY SC'S saturn simply marked down how "good" they were after 94 and they got a decent rating.
now, being an expert on how cars perform in collisions no tow cars fare the same in a collision, a car with more square lines, such as a volvo, or even a sl which is more squared off then a sc, will take a hit diffrently then a car with rounded lines. i think its a travesity that saturn did not do crash ratings on the sc but simply made it sound that since its built on the same platform as the s it must be as safe right? wrong, advertising propagana, if it WAS as safe then its testing would be public knowledge.
next, lets move onto the later model 3 door coupes, now ytou take a cars whos structurual rigidity has been compromised by taking away one of the support pillars (this is why we hear storys of 3 d coupes with so many creaks and groans body flex, hell one of the group members from another groupn had a brand new 2000 3d coupe, yellow special edition and every tie he went around a curve a certain way and hit a bump THE SUNROOF WOULD LITERALLY POP OUT AND BREAK! thats severe body flex.
the car was designed as a two door, and personally i think the 3rd doors cool, but not when safety is compromised.
just some fyi i thought youd find interesting.
now group,please sound off as we would to any other new member!

URtalking2CRASH · 02-13-2003, 01:50 PM

Welcome Cindy, terribly sorry to hear about your situation.

Joey - is it possible to have an Aftermarket fuel line made?

surge99 · 02-13-2003, 02:07 PM

Welcome to the spot Cindy.

Joeybagodonuts · 02-13-2003, 02:08 PM

emmy, that thought has gone through my mind many times, id LOVE to do something about it, but, im not an engineer, god forbid what i design doesnt do any better in a collision then not only would i be liable but id feel responsible.
but yes, i wish on your own some of you would relocate that line, where it comes close to the tire is such a STUPID spot.

ProjectSW1 · 02-13-2003, 02:31 PM

Hello there Cindy... welcome to the spot!

I'm very sorry to hear about your son's tragedy, it always hurts to lose family members and friends, especially in situation like that.

Last year, I had 3 people (close friends and family members) die on the same day... it was phone calls to my house every 3-4 hours...one tragic story after another...

I wish this on no one, tho I know we usually can't do anything about it.

All the best to you and your family.

Sincerely,

Brian K. Ritenour
a.k.a.
----==[ ProjectSW1 ]==----

CelticShadow · 02-13-2003, 02:34 PM

Welcome to the Spot Cindy, and I"m sorry for your loss.

As for the fuel line, I'd have to agree, moving it would make a hell of a difference. Adding stainless steel around the lines now would only make it more dangerous, especially on cars that are lowered, which would cause more of a spark. Might have to look into where would be the best place to move these lines.

ProjectSW1 · 02-13-2003, 02:35 PM

Joe, i'm not trying to be a stickler man... but my 1994 has only one airbag.
Did u mean to type 1995?

----==[ ProjectSW1 ]==----

(5 minutes later, after re-reading Joe's post) nevermind, I read that incorrectly, you said AFTER 1994... my mistake.

I know what you mean about the "lighter car" just getting bounced! I was rear ended by the Central Blood Bank Blood Bus, and I got launched into a full-size Chevy van!

URtalking2CRASH · 02-13-2003, 02:35 PM

my problem is i'm sort of limited as to where i can run mine