Broken Frame on a RAM 3500
You may have seen pics of this truck and camper floating around the interwbez for the last few weeks. Here's an article about it that was published earlier today. Broken Frame on a RAM 3500
Forum Discussion
wnjj wrote:Good point. Totally agree.
. . . after 25k miles it broke after driving 55 on roads that according to the owner were “kind of back and forth, and there's dips and stuff”. A cracked frame is likely due to oscillation of the whole load, working the frame until the crack formed . . . A bunch of weight sitting over the rear axle does not stress the frame where it broke unless there’s an unholy motion . . .
Oscillation and the location of the load's Center-of-Gravity over the rear axle is a key point. An oscillating, downward force (i.e., COG) directly over or in front of the rear axle should not have pushed the frame upward as shown in the pic. IMO, a failure (with a proper COG) would have resulted in the frame being pushed downward.
If this guy had taken the time to visit a scale, odds are he would have quickly discovered he was grossly overloaded. But, more to my point, he would have discovered his front axle was being off-loaded many, many hundreds of pounds indicating a COG that was way behind the rear axle.
