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It's auto related so I thought some might be interested.

Police interceptors sometimes have incidents where the gas tank opens up during high speed rear enders. This is a problem because state patrol cars are frequently hit from behind at high speeds. There can be sparks from metal hitting the ground causing a fire and sometimes the officer is incompacitated or otherwise unable to escape from the car. Police officers are at a higher risk having this happen because to the amount of time they spend stopped on the freeway.

Ford hired a rocket company, aerojet, that happens to know something about putting out fires to design a fire suppression system for their cop cars. Aerojet hired me early last year for the development program to help with building the many prototype units needed to okay a system for production, and I'll be staying on for the produciton integration as a manufacturing engineer. We're hoping to get the first production systems onto cars in march, so the whole team is really working hard right now.

Here's a website on how it works. I kinda have to watch my words when I describe how it works... but it is really cool when it goes off:

http://www.cvpi.com/fire_suppression.htm

It's been a blast working on this program so far. I feel sorry for all the engineers out there with boring jobs.

Sounds like a great experience, Alan.

Although I'd just circumvent the whole problem and tell the municipalities to go away from Ford cars in the first place.



(joking)

Yeah, Ring-shaped Reinforced Frame body structure > all else. STi interceptors for everyone

This problem would occur on alot of cars though. At high enough speeds, the gas tank just overpressurizes because it's in a crush zone.

The vic is the last body-on-frame car platform out there, so some people really don't want to see it go.

Very true. . . and it's got gobs of N/A power and room to haul firearms, equipment, and suspects.

I was just playing devil's advocate for a minute.

That's pretty cool. I wish I had a cool job right now.

legacy92ej22t wrote:That's pretty cool. I wish I had a cool job right now.

dont we all. at least you dont work at old country buffet i officially hate dishes

FG- this sounds very interesting what you are doing, i never knew that police cars exploded when they were rear ended.

The gas tank is nicely sandwiched between the rear bumper and some sharp protruding bolts on the back axle - just the way mama used to bake 'em back in the old days. The Pinto was vilified for the same reason ,,, like twenty-five years ago.

Steve

Ford chassis engineering at its finest.

Before too many people jump on the 'ford sucks' bandwagon I'd just like to toss in a word or two. The crown vics (grand marquis, and town cars) are actually pretty well engineered rigs (for american cars hahaha). I hang around on crownvic.net and I've seen loads and loads of info about the fire "problem". The way I see it is this: Those cars put up a hell of a fight against any kind of impact mostly due to the full frame and heavy weight.

Ford tests the cars to the national standard of rear-end impact. And then they test them of their own free will to an even higher speed rear-impact (20mph higher I think). The cars do fine in the tests. Now that being said there is a lot of danger involved in parking at the side of the highway and getting rammed at 70mph but I put it to you this way: what other car would survive that kind of hit long enough for the officers to even be worried about fire? Impala? nah. Intrepid? nah.

I think the crown vics get a bad reputation because the media loves to pick on something negative. In the last 25 years millions of crown vics have been used in law enforcement there has been what? 25 deaths due to fire? I don't mean to diminish the deaths of those poor officers and I have all the respect in the world for them and their families BUT statistically the numbers don't really seem like a big percentage to me. If someone can prevent a death of a law enforcement officer per year that's great! but I just don't like the media spin doctoring and people jumping down ford's throat on the issue.

okay. that was way more than a word or two. sorry guys for the rant. this one just drives me nuts, that's all

disclaimer: my numbers may be off a little but the concept remains the same.

I know what you're saying, and it's true, but the dated chassis doesn't allow for a safer redesign which would place the gas tank inboard. The other issue is that the doors get forced shut by the impact and trap the officer inside. That said, they can still take a hell of a hit that most other cars wouldn't take as well and I remember reading somewhere that the officers preferred them to the fwd crap they're getting now.

Steve

FG!!, I'm glad you have an interesting job...you bastard! No, I'm just kidding. You're job sounds like an awesome one. I sure wish my job was more interesting than it is turning out to be. I've had worse but my keep looking voice is getting louder. I've started looking for another job already but this time I won't leave until I have another. Funny thing is, I checked my messages today and a place I interviewed at earlier called me today. I'm also about ready to pack my things and head to Washington or somewhere far, far away. Of course, I've been ready to do that for about six months now.

washington>*

Get your ass over here, Scott.

The fuel tank is inboard.

They've done everything that they can to reduce protrusions that could puncture the tank, to the point where they've rounded the bolts on the differential. It's mainly overpressurization that is the problem. I'm fairly convinced that this problem will happen on any vehicle.

18 deaths is the number I've heard. In the grand scheme of things, a pretty small number.

75mph is the speed that we do our testing at.

It sounds like I'm defending ford, but i think i'd take a crown vic over a new impala. Many cops feels the same.

The downside of having a cool job is that it takes up my whole life. 55-70 hours a week and I don't know what state I'll be in tomorrow.