OT: Multi-vehicle car smash in the Solent

[N_Cook]

Near me an ocean going car transporter ship is grounded on the Brambles
Sandbank. Were they lucky, with 1500 vehicles with buckled and sheared
chassis, that it did not catch fire? Or for such shipments is it routine
to physically disconnect the battery in each vehicle.
Unless they can take advantge of whatever "Scottish" meteorologically
initiated "tidal" surge this coming weekend, it will be stuck there for
another 2 weeks before descent spring tides return

[mrob...@att.net]

N_Cook <div...@tcp.co.uk> wrote:
> Were they lucky, with 1500 vehicles with buckled and sheared chassis,
> that it did not catch fire?

Despite what you see in movies, it's pretty hard to create a fireball
by crashing cars into each other. Car designers have had 130 years or
so to work on this and they've gotten fairly good at it. :)

One piece of this is that since maybe the 1990s, just about every
circuit on most cars is fused. About the only thing that usually isn't
fused is the cable from the battery positive to the starter motor;
sometimes there is no fuse on the main alternator/generator output
wire.

> Or for such shipments is it routine to physically disconnect the
> battery in each vehicle.

I know that a lot of new cars are shipped with the engine computer
backup/radio backup/clock fuse removed, but that's just to keep the
battery from going dead. I've seen a dealer pre-delivery checklist that
mentions reinstalling this fuse, but doesn't say anything about
reconnecting the main cables to the battery. On the other hand, maybe
someone at the port hooks up the battery when the cars come off the
boat. *

I don't think any car gets a full tank of gas at the factory, unless the
new owner is picking it up there. I suspect that cars destined for a
boat ride may get even less fuel than ones that are going to go by truck
or rail.

I read a magazine article a few years ago about a ship, bringing new
Mazdas from Japan to the US, that rolled on its side in the ocean. This
is it:
http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/ff_seacowboys?currentPage=all

The article focused on the efforts to right the ship; it mentioned that
when the recovery workers went through the hold, it was slippery, due to
leaks of transmission fluid, etc. I think it said most of the cars were
still tied down in their places, but a few had broken loose and shifted
around.

The job was basically to get accurate blueprints of the ship, and then
use modeling software that the recovery company had developed to figure
out where to add ballast or flood compartments, where to pump
compartments out, and so on, to bring the ship upright in a controlled
way. Then the divers and welders got busy setting it up, they switched
on the pumps, and watched to see if they did it right. It turned out
that they did; they righted the ship and either sailed it or towed it
into port in the US.

The cars went to a storage lot while lawyers and insurance companies
did their thing. The lawyers were worried about liability if the cars
were rebuilt, or if parts from them were sold as spares, so about 4,700
brand new cars went into a shredder.

Matt Roberds

* Foreign car companies that sell into the US are good at doing things
at the port. Since the 1960s, there has been a 25% import tax on
light trucks. At least one of the Japanese companies got around this
by sending over two boats at a time of "truck parts", which were taxed
less. One boat was full of cab+chassis and the other boat was full of
truck beds. There was a shack at the port with a couple of guys, a
crane, an air ratchet, and a big bucket of bolts. More recently, Ford
builds the Transit Connect in Europe, installs windows and rear seats
in it, and imports it to the US as a passenger car. In the US, the
windows get replaced by steel panels, the seats get shredded, and it
becomes a panel van.

[N_Cook]

That Cougar case was referred to in a local news report today, as an
example of the same sort of design that is right on the edge of
stability, shallow draft, high sided. Little latitude available for when
things go wrong even assuming correct computer assisted ballasting
before sailing. Perhaps a bit like fly-by-wire aircraft that are
inherently unstable and need computer control of control surfaces to
make them stay in the air.

[N_Cook]

On 06/01/2015 14:45, mrob...@att.net wrote:

There is a pic on that Cougar piece showing a number of the cars with
active tamper alarms so at least enough battery power for sidelights.
But it also referes to inert-gas fire suppression , a danger in its own
right for salvors etc

[John Robertson]

One of my employees is also a dock worker and drives cars off ships
often here in Vancouver, BC. He just told me that they simply hop in the
car and drive them off the ship, no prep, no connecting batteries. About
1 in 200 cars needs a battery boost...of course they remove shipping tie
downs first.

John :-#)#

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