Re: [DMCForum] front frame extension questions.

["Walter Coe" <Whalt@xxxxxxx>]

John,

The crumple tubes that Ken K has had made are very nice.
The last batch is different than what I saw before.  His
earlier version had steel plates on both sides that could
trap moisture & rust.  But this is nothing that a bit of
sealing won't fix.  Upon close inspection you can see that
Ken put a lot of thought into the design.  There are
appropriate dimples/holes to initiate crumples in the proper
places like the OEM design.

As for making your own:  Consider repairing what you have if
it isn't too far gone.  If you could get your hands on the
original engineering drawings, that would be interesting.
They could be had for a price, but it wouldn't be cost
effective.  As an example, I bought a license, per se, to
own a copy of the factory sway bar drawings, but as part of
the agreement I'm not allowed distribute them.  The sway bar
is something that would be really hard to improve on without
the original specs.  Hopefully someday sometime I'll get
around to making an improved version.

If you wanted to make your own crumple tube from scratch, I
believe that close examination of an original along with
some knowledge of the materials would be sufficient.  But
for doing a one-off, unless you do the work yourself, I
doubt it would be cheaper than buying one of Ken's.  Maybe
you could make a large enough batch to supply the folks
(err, I mean blokes) on your side of the pond, but it would
take a long time to recover your investment -- if at all.

Also worth mentioning is the crumple tube that PDC makes out
of stainless steel.  I've compared it side-by-side with OEM
& Ken's reproduction.  It certainly would never rust.  But
it doesn't have the dimples/holes to insure that crumples
propagate like in the OEM design.

Walt

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