being an automotive insurance company material damage estimator and having been rear ended by some putz while driving our 65 c10 i can personally tell you there is no "crash management" built into these old tanks. what i mean by that is the frame of modern truck have what are known as convolutes (indentations)or crumble zones that are designed to absorb the inertial forces at impact by folding over on themselves. these are built into bpr brkts and or at the frame rail ends. november 15th 2007 i had stopped at an extremely short to non existant merge lane and was waiting for a freightliner to go past as the ole 292 didn't have enough umph to tempt jumping out in front of a semi. there was a guy behind me in a ford explorer that as he stated, never touched the brakes and proceeded to plough into our truck. the rr corner of the rear bpr was squashed up against the box, the rr bpr brkts bent, the rt side of the box wrinkled up to the rr whl arch and the lf of the box was flexed enough to hit the cab right behind the driver's side. the left side of the box bowed out. all the inerial forces resonated through the frame to the occupant (me) in the cab. i'm still going to physio for my lower back due to the cross bar in the seat back that slammed into back and for my lt shoulder as it hit hard into the rear glass as i was cork screwed to the left looking at traffic going by. i was pushed a good two to three truck lengths before jumping on the brakes again as not to be pushed into a freightliner. the truck fared better than i. the frame does not appear to have "diamonded" ( one rail going further ahead than the other).i'll have it put on a frame machine to double check it for sqaure. these trucks are simply "tanks". i'm sure they're constructed from melted down naval battleships
cheers,
mike
Last edited by burgandybolt; 04/28/2008 5:07 PM.
