http://www.autosafety.org/chevrolet-motor-mounts
This link details what can happen if the left motor mount were to break as the defect could cause them to. So what if the kids were doing what kids in a muscle car do...drive a little too fast....do donuts on the boat ramp...rev the engine in forward and reverse....the motions cause the weak motor mounts to give way and the result is the car in the water. I really think this should be looked into rather than this being a murder. It sounds to me like the perfect storm of events for these kids to end up in the lake.
Hi, this is my first post here and I'd have to respectfully disagree in regard to the motor mounts. The Williams kid camaro looks to be an extreme bare bones, no frills coupe. As in, I doubt it was even a v8 car (more likely an in line 250 cubic inch six cylinder), which would make sense considering his meager wage at a supermarket. However, after removing/installing my share of chevrolet small and big-block engines, I can assure you that those mounts (regardless of that obscure safety alert) were more than adequate. I can see possible failure due to an impact, such as I believe was the case when the car impacted the water (the damage to the clutch fan also supported that)
Keep in mind also, that as early as 1967, factory mounts were being used at the NHRA winternationals in fairly stock camaros such as that run by Bill "Grumpy" Jenkins. Jenkins actually won the '67 winternationals in a '67 camaro that went undefeated along with the factory mounts. Some of those v8 engines put out an incredible amount of torque using the factory mounts, (a lot of twisting force distributed to the right rear of the cars) if they had been that prone to failure en-mass, it would have been a disaster for General Motors at the time. I also seen mention of Ralph Nadar's name in that alert, Nadar at the time was a severe critic of safety back then, he wrote a book entitled "unsafe at any speed" which essentially killed the chevrolet corvair. Point is, many of the complaints issued by Nadar were unfounded because that was his agenda then, which may explain the recall/alert.
I also read somewhere back about seat belts in another thread in relation to this. Seat belts were pretty much standard issue by then. What you had was a simple lap belt, and up above tucked into the headliner was an optional shoulder belt you could use in conjunction creating a three point harness. Regardless, the majority of drivers did not belt up back then. In my own personal opinion in both cases, it was more so a dangerous stretch of road unfamiliar to the drivers that contributed to the cars entering the lake. Truly a sad story though no matter how you look at it.
But just because that car came out of the lake looking bare bones doesn't mean that you know what it had under the hood. I've seen too many that looked bare bones just like that but it had a powerful v-8 under the hood. The owner was more interested in how fast it would run, not so much with how it looked.
Very interesting re the engine mounts ,picture yourself , new muscle car , friends onboard , out cruising about... Maybe speeding to show off and a mount breaks forcing the accelarator open and disaster?
If that turns out to be what happened could the families claim against GM?
actually, no...you'd have to impact something pretty hard to bust a mount loose (I'm just being realistic)...Now if the weld cracked that secures the mount to the frame? The engine may tilt, but the gas pedal is secured to the carb with a tension cable (it would have to tilt an insane amount to disconnect and snap the linkage)...In effect, you'd have to impact something pretty hard. I'm not saying it's impossible, but a stuck throttle would more likely result from a spring or linkage failure than it would be a motor mount from excessive speed. Hope that helps...
I thought the way Jimmy's car looked was kind of different. I also thought I'd seen such a car before, but when i looked at Camaros of that era, nothing looked exactly like his.
So, I wonder if it was a dealer special paint job/package. This could also explain why the tires were changed. However, I was under the impression that it wasn't too good of an idea to change tires on performance cars. You need to keep the same type of tires on them or they may not drive as well. but, I could be wrong about that.
Do we know if there was damage to the rear of car from a fast entry into the water? ( the back has severe damage but I'm sure that was from pulling it out ?)
The factory 17 inch radials on my girlfriends tame little 2010 dodge caliber have way more grab than the bias-plys that came on the quickest of the muscle cars. Speaking of which, muscle cars were designed to be quick as opposed to fast. Meaning, all of the impressive ones of the day were geared to top out at under 120 mph (emphasis was to get up to speed quick as opposed to perform at a top speed). As far as the older car, again if you consider the road -- it's pretty well a blind rise, meaning even at 45 mph an elderly driver might not have enough road left to react in time to avoid the water. And the '53 chevy is long before any sort of safety implements such as padded dashes, power steering/brakes, and seat belts. Safety really was an after thought altogether until Robert McNamara became the president of Ford motor company in the early sixties, prior to his appointment of secretary of defense under Kennedy.
I remember that Time Capsule story...what a heartbreaker!Yeah, the car literally pulled apart (almost in half) during the recovery. 40 years in a lake is going to make the sheet metal as brittle as an egg shell. If you remember the Tulsa Plymouth that was recovered from an underground, concrete vault (time capsule) in 2007 (the vault was compromised and took on water) -- that car looked similar after 20 some years submerged in water (the vault was likely to have cracked in the early eighties during construction at street level above it) -- you could literally poke your pinky finger through the body panels. Tulsa Plymouth --
link: Miss Belvedere - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia