in a Crown Vic this morning...13th so far in the nation

 

Haven't they been modifying their cars over there? The PD auto shop here has been doing some kind of mod to the cars as a stopgap measure while waiting for the Ford supplied parts. They're grinding down some part under the car that's supposed to be puncturing the tanks in a rear end crash.

 

Hit a car, any car in the rear, with a rear tank at 65MPH, and there will be fuel tank rupture. And most likly a fire. It not just a crown vic thing. It just so happens that almost all PD's use them.

 

Hey TexfordD -

I went to high school with him (Rick Metzler).

 

I've seen a lot of discussion on this on various firefighting and emergency services boards. Some places are retrofitting their CV's, some are not. I think the city of Phoenix replaced all their gas tanks with fuel cells or racing style bladders. CHP is apparently removing a bracket that has a bunch of screws that point at the gas tank, and putting a shield/guard in its place.

The message I read said that CHP is rear-ended "once a week on average", so I think they must have some experience with this.

It's apparently quite easy to make contact with the gas tank on these cars - I remember reading about a radio (de-)install where a trunk-mounted radio was screwed into the wall of the trunk, and when it was removed, they could smell gas... seems that the top two screws went right into the side of the tank.

--j.

 

the NHSTA determined that it is of no design fault of Ford it is just that most Police Dept's use Crown Vics and get rear-ended a lot (As noted above)

 

The crown Vic's in addition to the fuel tanks rupturing also buckle so the doors wont open trapping the victim inside.

They are retrofitting the police cars out here in AZ with some sort of shield to keep it from smacking the differential but they are too cheap to put bladder fuel tanks in that would be even better, IMO.

 

Ive been doing a lot of those grinding the sway bar bracket modifications, but i dont really see how it helps much.