'You bend it, you mend it' - Piper sues Hales

[heebeegeetee]

K50 DEL said:

If this ends up in court then surely there'll be a knock on effect in the number of guest drivers agreeing to appear.... after all if you're asked to drive someone else's expensive car at Goodwood FoS are you really going to risk it knowing you might get sued if something goes wrong.

Bad sportsmanship on behalf of the owner if you ask me.

I don't think this is the same thing though.

Asking someone to race your car is one thing, being asked for a loan of your car so that a commercial transaction (ie an article to be produced for monetary gain) is another.

[DonkeyApple]

K50 DEL said:

If this ends up in court then surely there'll be a knock on effect in the number of guest drivers agreeing to appear.... after all if you're asked to drive someone else's expensive car at Goodwood FoS are you really going to risk it knowing you might get sued if something goes wrong.

Bad sportsmanship on behalf of the owner if you ask me.

I think side is covered by driver contracts.

This would impact journalists. And all it is likely to lead to is a standard contract being drawn up that absolves the driver in the same way. Owner takes the risk for the promotion of their investment.

[agtlaw]

K50 DEL said:

If this ends up in court

It's in the High Court. Try reading the article.

[will_]

K50 DEL said:

Bad sportsmanship on behalf of the owner if you ask me.

Even if the driver did something negligent?

[EDLT]

You'd think a car like that would have a rev limiter in case of gearbox failure.

[markCSC]

All seems odd to me . The incident happened in 2009 and Piper has since sold the car. How can Hales defend himself when it is his word against the word of an engineering company paid by Piper???? The work has been done, the car repaired and now there is no way to trace any "fault" with the car's gearbox.

[markCSC]

EDLT said:

You'd think a car like that would have a rev limiter in case of gearbox failure.

Even with a rev limiter you can over rev an engine.

[SFV]

The article on this test of the 917 appeared in Octane July 2009.

[GC8]

james_gt3rs said:

GC8 said:

james_gt3rs said:

The story doesn't add up. If it 'fell out of gear', then the only reason it would over-rev is that if the rev limiter was set too low. Else, the driver would have changed down too early and forced the revs too high.

Rubbish! If it jumped out of gear under acceleration then no one could have backed off quickly enough to prevent an iver-rev.

I was thinking that maybe the car had an adjustable rev limiter, but it's probably too old I guess. If it did, you'd surely set it to 7000rpm.

I think that you could set it to 5,000rpm, but if the car jumped out of gear whilst under load and in-boost then itd still shoot up to and massively over-rev.

A rev limiter will only stop you from deliberatly revving up over the limit, but it cant govern the engines speed in the event of a mishap.

[Ozzie Osmond]

heebeegeetee said:

Except that it was in a professional capacity.

In which case you might reasonably expect a short written agreement to prevent exactly this problem.

heebeegeetee said:

Both people in this case are highly responsible and respectable people in the world of historic motor racing of course.

Hence my original suggestion that they may be well advised to pay half each and avoid a lot of public wrangling, expensive legal fees, court costs etc.

[Herman Toothrot]

tvrolet said:

A bit off topic, but after my engine grenading at Oulton I could see from the logs it was on a cooling down lap and constant low revs and good pressurs temps. There's a rev limter so I shouldn't have been over revved and I had no recall of previous fluffed changes earlier in the day. I was also sure that I'd never over revved it on down changes so the thing remains unexplained (although the rood cause was a broken valve spring I'm sure). So anyone else poodling about in the car instead of me would have had the same blow-up.

But - and here's the point at last - what struck me when I was checking the logs is that my data logger takes its RPM off the HT king lead, and with the rev limiter it will cut the spark off if over-revved and on a 'soft cut' would still let sparks through at the maximum allowed revs. So in the event of an over-rev due to too low a gear downchange the logger will still show revs at the maximum allowed by the limiter rather than the true RPM. Something to watch if your logger is wired that way and you expect it to show over-revs...it won't.

Only way I can see an engine being destroyed due to driver error is a miss shift into a lower gear. If I lent my car out and some one did that I'd be pissed and want them to at least as a minimum go halves, I'd like to hope they'd confess and offer to pay the full bill. Rev limiters should prevent any damage from it falling out of gear etc, I have let 2 friends drive my car on trackdays who have never driven on track before or my car before, both found it rev'd quicker into the redline that they were use to (rev limiter is set at 8250rpm) rev limiter was repeatedly hit, it doesn't cause any damage - that's why its there, its still safe at 8250rpm.

I have had an engine spin a bearing on track due to oil starvation that's no ones fault but my own for not preparing the car properly it should have had a baffled sump fitted.

If the car in question had a engine failure due to any mechanical defect or deficiency (I'd argue no rev limiter is a deficiency), then the owner should pay. Driver error - hitting the wrong gear driver pays.

[Herman Toothrot]

markCSC said:

Even with a rev limiter you can over rev an engine.

Only by hitting a lower gear on a down shift to early or mis shifting into a lower gear when you wanted a higher gear, driver error if that happens. Totally different thing to it falling out of gear when the foots flat to the floor, no load on the engine when that happens and should be electronically controlled.

[ChrisW.]

Piper has no-where to go. He can't prove that the same thing would not have happened had he been driving the car himself.

Hales has driven many cars for many people and no longer has to prove his competence.

Nobody would drive a third parties car on a "you bend it you mend it basis" --- certainly not for an article that will pay £250 including photographs.

[Top Banana]

even in period (early 70's) the 917 had a bit of a reputation as being very unforgiving with respect to engine damage from over-reving. Even siffert missed a shift whilst coming past pits at Le Mans in 71 and damaged engine whilst leading race.

seems a bit sad that two very experienced racers cannot sort this out without going legal...

[anonymous-user]

when lawyers get involved it always ends up sour.

well i don't care but here's some 917 action..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=resu77vBKm0

[Carfolio]

The Crack Fox said:

"You bend it, you mend it" - seems perfectly fair to me, it's a famously expensive racing car, if Hales had any concerns about not being able to afford it going 'pop' then perhaps he shouldn't have driven it.

I'm not sure why this isn't the 100% consensus view. It's a perfectly reasonable and fair stance to have.

[Boshly]

heebeegeetee said:

K50 DEL said:

If this ends up in court then surely there'll be a knock on effect in the number of guest drivers agreeing to appear.... after all if you're asked to drive someone else's expensive car at Goodwood FoS are you really going to risk it knowing you might get sued if something goes wrong.

Bad sportsmanship on behalf of the owner if you ask me.

I don't think this is the same thing though.

Asking someone to race your car is one thing, being asked for a loan of your car so that a commercial transaction (ie an article to be produced for monetary gain) is another.

Do you not think there was also a benefit to Mr Piper for lending his car to appear in the article? Or did he do it purely out of the goodness of his heart? (apols for scarcasm).

I let a friend, who was very nervous, drive my 16M around Modena track simply because I wanted to see it driven in 'anger' whilst I stood in the stand. There is pride in seeing a beautiful machine you own being used as God intended and more so (including a commercial value) of seeing it in a magazine especially one as high profile as Octane.

Now of course none of us really know whether Mark Hales pleaded to use the car for an article or whether David Piper pestered for it to be written about (to use the two extremes) but its not as simple a transaction as you state.

My opinion on the case, for what it's worth, is I guess the ultimate responsibility for costs should be borne by the owner, and if you don't like that, then don't lend your car.

There can of course be exceptions to this (hiring car out to film company?) but I think in such cases it should be made very clear (written contract?) that All damage, mechanical failure or accident, be rectified by the borrower. Which I guess is what you, heebeegeetee were saying; it's just that I wouldn't say the situation was necessarily such..

[Boshly]

Carfolio said:

The Crack Fox said:

"You bend it, you mend it" - seems perfectly fair to me, it's a famously expensive racing car, if Hales had any concerns about not being able to afford it going 'pop' then perhaps he shouldn't have driven it.

I'm not sure why this isn't the 100% consensus view. It's a perfectly reasonable and fair stance to have.

Because its not always as simple as that. A £20k bill to some would be devastating, to others it would be like you or I dropping £100. As such a lot depends on the exact circumstances.

To a much smaller degree, my cars are insured any driver, if I lend one to a friend because I want to help, or to let them share what I have, I am getting some satisfaction out of it. I also may be pushing them to try something out of their comfort zone. If they inadvertently had an accident, I expect to pay the excess and suffer the future effects of the claim (considerably less than this example but in context). I would in no way 'expect' them to make good my losses.

Alternatively if someone specifically asked to drive a car of mine, and I felt comfortable enough to allow them to do so, but not wanting to cover potential losses, I would state clearly and categorically that thy make good any losses (I would also have to be comfortable they could afford to!).

Like most things in life, it's always going to be different circumstances.

[heebeegeetee]

Boshly said:

Do you not think there was also a benefit to Mr Piper for lending his car to appear in the article?

Not really, no. It was/is an exceptional car the value of which could only be truly determined by auction. I understand it was valued at 1.25 mill and a magazine article would make no difference to that whatsoever.

[andy-xr]

The commercial'ness of the use, if people are suggesting that Mr Hales is profiting from this, even if he gives the owner all the fee he'll still be around £37k short. And as another poster suggested, the owner may have already had either a payment for use or a similar trade (write up, additional press coverage) which would increase the value of the car in any normal circumstances

Did I read that the car had been sold on already and damages paid for, this was a back claim?