Consequences !

[mik]

A friend a couple of weeks ago while driving down the freeway(on cruise control), happily in his near 15 year work in progress project car suddenly came to grips with his mortality for the second time in his life(the first time on a race track), after completing his car 1 week ago an IRS tie rod tube due to fatigue and probably a degree of copping way more stress than the factory donk could ever hope to inflict on it, over a period of time weakened and finally broke, causeing the car to spin like a top at 100 kph on the freeway crossing 3 lines of traffic and somehow missing them all then slamming into the armco.
The end result..........my friend escaped without a scratch, the car totaled probably 50K invested not counting time and labour, he`s suddenly lost all interest in cars and selling whats left of the car, it saddens me to see all the time and effort he put into his car which was an engineering work of art.
The failed part.............a 15 dollar piece of steel tube with a thread cut in either end, 3mm wall thickness, a part that 99.9 percent of us would never even consider changeing,..............i guess there`s no real reason for this post except to point out how the unexpected can happen, i don`t wanna mention details for obviouse reasons, any one else have any similar happenings?