In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"John" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 07:29:27 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:20:07 -0600, the infamous Lewis Hartswick
scrawled the following:

I didn't read the whole tirade but Ralph Nadar
is/was an IDIOT. He lost all credibility when
he wrote " Unsafe at any Speed".
What a load of BS.

Yeah, he castrated GM while allowing the VW to go unpunished, despite
the fact that they had more problems than the Corvair, including the
extreme tendency for several to set themselves on fire almost as an
almost daily practice.

No that is not correct. Nader wrote Unsafe at any Speed, which was
pretty much a hatchet job to the extent that totally incorrect
statements were made and even a sketch of how a swing axle works was
deliberately drawn showing the outside wheel in a turn tipping inward
at the bottom, "tuck under" as Nader preferred to it when in fact it
does exactly the opposite, although if you do not understand how the
suspension works it might appear to be correct.

That's correct. I had an auto-mechanic friend in the 1970s who loved Corvairs,
and he had experienced the tuck-under phenomena. The solution was to install
the standard "sports package", which cost a few hundred dollars and included
some kind of torsion or stabilizer bar between the front wheels.

He was of mixed mind on Unsafe at Any Speed. On the one hand, he considered the
book to be wrong. On the other hand, it drove the cost of Corvairs down,
allowing him to buy more than one.


Ah, John, no. I hesitate to interfere with your trashing of Nader g, but
he was correct. It was commonly called "jacking" among the sports car
fraternity. Anyone who drove an early VW, Corvair, Triumph Spitfire, or
box-stock Porsche 356 (including the original Speedster) will be glad to
relate some horror stories about it for you. d8-)

Some older chassis books can explain and illustrate the same thing. If you
were actively driving sports cars around, say, 1965, you were very familiar
with it.

I recall reading these explanations, but no longer recall the details. I don't
recall that it was called "jacking", though. My friend didn't call it that, if
I recall.

Joe Gwinn