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Old 01-21-2020, 12:29 PM   #11
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Default Re: [AtE] Early days, and vehicle wrecks

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Originally Posted by Daigoro View Post
Aren't all the windows made of safety glass, which just crumbles when damaged?
The side windows do. Windshields are laminated glass. Tempered glass (the one that breaks into pebbles) wouldn't be good for keeping out flying rocks.
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Old 01-21-2020, 12:33 PM   #12
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Default Re: [AtE] Early days, and vehicle wrecks

Another bonus to salvaging car parts is that basically everything electronic runs on the same voltage. Radio, lights, motors (not the big Tesla motor obviously), switches, valves, pumps, fans, etc. are all 12V and easily powered by any car battery you find. Other electronics might take a little work to match up voltages, but car stuff is all basically interchangeable. Oh, and every car also comes with its own battery charger in the form of an alternator. You could, with some gearing, whip up a water wheel or bike to charge car batteries using the alternator.
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Old 01-21-2020, 12:43 PM   #13
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Default Re: [AtE] Early days, and vehicle wrecks

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The side windows do. Windshields are laminated glass. Tempered glass (the one that breaks into pebbles) wouldn't be good for keeping out flying rocks.
Laminated glass is a safety glass. Windshields have to crumble instead of forming shards because drivers were getting shredded in accidents when they went flying head first through them.
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Old 01-21-2020, 12:48 PM   #14
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Default Re: [AtE] Early days, and vehicle wrecks

Bear in mind that scavengers are not necessarily competent; they could easily be collecting stuff that lacks any real value. However, in general the biggest value of a wrecked vehicle is spare parts for fixing other vehicles, which for an EV is probably everything except the frame and furnishings.
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Old 01-21-2020, 03:26 PM   #15
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Default Re: [AtE] Early days, and vehicle wrecks

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Originally Posted by Daigoro View Post
Laminated glass is a safety glass. Windshields have to crumble instead of forming shards because drivers were getting shredded in accidents when they went flying head first through them.
Windshields aren't tempered glass, though, so they don't break into the little pellets. Lamination keeps it together even if the glass breaks, so that you don't get loose shards. Going through the windshield usually means knocking the windshield out of its frame in one piece (broken, but still together).

Compare side or rear windows, where a hard hit at any point will reduce the entire window to chunks the size of rock salt.
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Last edited by RyanW; 01-21-2020 at 05:24 PM. Reason: Speling errurs
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Old 01-21-2020, 05:13 PM   #16
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Default Re: [AtE] Early days, and vehicle wrecks

Just about everything, if they're creative enough.

Fuel and oil, first and most obviously.

Water from the radiator if they're truly desperate for water and have a cheap means of distilling out the antifreeze.

Cargo. The stuff that most people keep in their cars will be useless, but you might find someone with all the recommended emergency repair or winter/desert survival equipment for drivers: flashlights, hand tools (e.g., tire wrench, jack), first aid packs, snack foods, blankets or sleeping bags, water bottles, fuel containers, water containers, sunshades, water filtration devices, etc.

If there were lots of cars on the roads trying to get away from Whatever Ended It All, there might be more valuable things to loot if you don't mind getting near all the dead bodies - food, water, camping equipment, storage containers, guns, ammo, coins/jewelry, rechargeable batteries, winter/summer clothing, shoes, drugs (prescription or otherwise), alcohol.

As to the car itself, in addition to the previous suggestions:

Seatbelts - webbing makes good ropes, buckles make good quick-release belt or pack buckles.

Plastic panels might be tough enough that they can be used as armor/shields. If not, they can be used as rigid, waterproof roofing material. If the plastic can be thermoformed it gets a lot more useful for making armor, tools, and containers.

If nothing else, much of the synthetic stuff inside a car will burn. It won't be pleasant to be around but it might be good enough to boil water in a container closed so the plastic stench doesn't get in. Since plastic usually burns with a thick black smoke, it might be useful for smoke signals.

Otherwise useless cosmetic plastic bumpers might possibly be repurposed into storage containers or gutters for water.

Emergency "doughnut" tires might actually be useful for human/animal-propelled vehicles. If you're really desperate, you can put them on a car, but don't expect them to last, or be safe at higher speeds.

Metal panels are going to be thin steel. Too thin to make good armor, but great for all sorts of repairs and handmade gadgets. The paint will come off eventually if you beat on the metal enough while you're working it. (You can also burn it off if you're in a well-ventilated location and you aren't picky about your respiratory health.)

Don't forget all the nuts, bolts, washers, etc. Nobody's going to be making fasteners after the end so they'll quickly become valuable - especially the larger ones which can be used for structural purposes or for lower-TL vehicles. Smaller bolts can be sharpened for use as arrowheads, picks, or scrapers. Larger nuts are good as weights for bolas or weighted nets.

Gears from transmission, etc. might be useful for lower TL devices like windmills or treadmills. Again, it's the sort of high quality stuff that high TL people take for granted but which takes a lot of time, trouble, and skill to make by hand.

The engine blocks on most modern cars are cast aluminum. If you've got enough fuel to heat a kiln, it's not hard to do aluminum casting.

Eventually, high-quality steel will get scarce enough that scavengers will even take the frame. They'll saw/cold chisel it into pieces that low tech smiths can use. Larger steel car parts like brake pads might eventually become the largest "anvil shaped object" available to smiths.
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Old 01-21-2020, 06:06 PM   #17
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Default Re: [AtE] Early days, and vehicle wrecks

Quote:
Originally Posted by Daigoro View Post
Laminated glass is a safety glass. Windshields have to crumble instead of forming shards because drivers were getting shredded in accidents when they went flying head first through them.
Pretty sure the main point of laminated windows is that having an impact on the front window turn the front window into a bunch of tiny bits of glass means you suddenly have a bunch of gravel flying into your face while trying to deal with whatever else is going on, which is not going to help. You want the windshield to (a) continue blocking wind, (b) remain reasonably transparent, and (c) not send fragments flying into your face.
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Last edited by Anthony; 01-21-2020 at 06:11 PM.
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Old 01-21-2020, 07:46 PM   #18
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Default Re: [AtE] Early days, and vehicle wrecks

Quote:
Originally Posted by Daigoro View Post
Aren't all the windows made of safety glass, which just crumbles when damaged?
Front windshields are laminated glass, side and back are usually tempered. Laminated glass will give you shards if you can cut out the pieces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oZokI0UrHI
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Old 01-21-2020, 09:42 PM   #19
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Default Re: [AtE] Early days, and vehicle wrecks

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Pretty sure the main point of laminated windows is that having an impact on the front window turn the front window into a bunch of tiny bits of glass means you suddenly have a bunch of gravel flying into your face while trying to deal with whatever else is going on, which is not going to help. You want the windshield to (a) continue blocking wind, (b) remain reasonably transparent, and (c) not send fragments flying into your face.
Your reasoning is persuasive. Nevertheless, when I was a boy most cars in Australia had tempered glass windscreens, which were called "safety glass" because they were safer than annealed (window) glass if you got thrown at then by a sudden deceleration*. To have your windscreen hit by a stone on a gravel road and suddenly cease to be transparent was a well-known hazard (though the pieces usually stayed in place unless the impactor was massive).

In 1988 I was in a Volvo 240 that was hit in the windscreen by a brick, the two doing 110 km/hr in opposite directions†. I was lucky that the car had a laminated windscreen; they were mandatory on new cars in Australia then, but had not been when the car was new.

_______
* My father, a country doctor, used to tell stories about stitching up lots of long parallel cuts on the faces of people who had gone face-first through annealed glass windscreens. It happened to my eldest brother once, and to the rocker Johnny O'Keefe.

† In that case the impact was so violent that the glass fragments of the middle third of the windscreen did not stick to the interlayer (which they usually do), and did spray through the passenger compartment. I got a lot of little slivers of glass stuck shallowly into my scalp and the backs of my hands and forearms, and a chip taken out of the left lens of my eyeglasses. I also got struck by the rearview mirror, which was torn out of its mount. But if that car had had a tempered-glass windscreen the brick would have taken my head clean off.
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Old 01-21-2020, 10:25 PM   #20
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Default Re: [AtE] Early days, and vehicle wrecks

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Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
* My father, a country doctor, used to tell stories about stitching up lots of long parallel cuts on the faces of people who had gone face-first through annealed glass windscreens. It happened to my eldest brother once, and to the rocker Johnny O'Keefe.
This is what I was thinking of. Safety glass was regulated for windshields due to the number of accidents where the victim was found with their head only protruding through the glass, and their neck being almost severed on a guillotine of glass shards.

Quote:
Originally Posted by safisher View Post
Front windshields are laminated glass, side and back are usually tempered. Laminated glass will give you shards if you can cut out the pieces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oZokI0UrHI
I guess it depends on the particular vehicle.

Wikipedia suggests that modern laminated glass uses layers of tempered glass:
Modern laminated glass is produced by bonding two or more layers of ordinary annealed glass (or tempered glass) together with a plastic interlayer, usually polyvinyl butyral or ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA).

A Google images search shows some windshields with sharding, but others with crumbling.
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