By performing a retrofit instead of being the original manufacturer they still bypass NHTSA regulation. And another article noted the demand was light enough that many limos are made piecemeal. I don’t think anyone wants to be holding an unsold limo.
Don’t know about that, but it will be interesting to look at the details about this car and the maintenance it received. I’ve heard of general breakdown problems from small operators who buy used limos. Those things are good money makers, so I’d suspect a used limo for sale has a lot of problems. But we don’t have many details yet. It’s fun to speculate, but we’ll get some hard answers before long, and it could be very interesting in many respects. This operator is already screwed just for having one too many passengers on board even though it may not have contributed to the tragedy at all.
You can’t double the weight of a vehicle without making substantial changes to the suspension, and hopefully to the brakes. I suspect that little is ever done except uprating the tires and changing out the springs to maintain ride height. This means that the load on suspension components may be past manufacturer design spec, and the wear rate is going to be exceptional on joints, pivots, pins etc. There are going to be failures (failure modes) not typically seen with normal usage.
ETA: this is even more true with newer vehicles, where every excess ounce is engineered out. These aren’t old pickups, with heavily over-engineered parts; they are vehicles already working at their design limits before they’re given giganto pills.
I suspect that right now the wreck is being examined by the CHP along with (or observed by) people from Ford, the limo mod firm, the limo operator, and possibly any other component supplier.
My SWAG is that the root cause will turn out to be substandard design or poorly installed wiring in the limo mod process that set the carpeting/seat foam on fire. Further I will guess that said carpet will be found to not meet flammability standards.
"California Highway Patrol investigators have been examining the charred wreck at a towing lot in Redwood City. Multiple sources tell ABC7 News that the air springs in the rear of the limo somehow ruptured, setting off a domino effect that led to the fire…
“The car would be jumping like a horse,” Mustafa continued. “If there’s a load in it, it would be bottoming at the ground, which is I think what happened. It bottomed on the ground and unfortunately, the gas tank is right there. The car with the weight, it bounced down too hard, and ended up hitting the gas tank, which is right at this spot here. It might have hit the gas tank and then you see, when it hits the ground it will create a spark. There’s a spark here and there’s fuel going down. So it catches fire.” http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/peninsula&id=9128860
looking at the picture the car is sitting low even for loss of the air lift system. I wouldn’t expect it to scrape the gas tank if it bottoms out but like the article said it could have bounced and struck the road.
The trasportation company that services the route between HQ and the satellite office will put its party bus into service when no regular buses are available.
" The limousine fire on the San Mateo Bridge that killed five women en route to a wedding party, including the bride, was an unforeseeable accident caused by the failure of an air suspension system in the rear of the vehicle, authorities said Monday.
Not exactly the details I considered, but other than side thoughts about a fuel leak I bracketed the problem pretty closely.
There needs to be better safety oversight on these vehicles that are heavily modified by shops more concerned with comfort and style than safety, resulting in under-engineered or at least greatly overloaded suspension, brakes and bodies, that are then intended to be jammed full of people not in any frame of mind or chemical condition to react well in an emergency. They are death traps waiting to happen… oh, look, eight-channel sound! Crank it up!
Are stretch limousines all after-factory modified? I guess I thought until now that many came from the manufacturer that way and just the interiors were custom.
Right. There had been factory limos that weren’t stretched, like this '73 Cadillac. Factory limos started getting smaller as the gas crisis worsened, leading to the popularity of the stretch.
