I have 2 concerns:- 1 a) Do we (or for that matter MMC) know for sure that the new built-in stiffener will cure the problem of fatigue cracking in the early chassis's once and for all? b) By the same token do we (or MMC) know for sure that the cracking problem is not going to manifest itself in the later chassis's? Unless extensive testing and/or computer simulation has been carried out by MMC (which I doubt), I believe both the above have not been around long enough (or covered enough miles) to prove they will be OK in the long term. A cracked chassis could result in the car swerving either into a ditch or into oncoming traffic.
2) My other concern is the high number of timing belt breakages (many at below 10,000 miles) when this would obviously bring the car to a halt with no warning. If this were to happen in the outside lane of a busy motoway the results could be disastrous. I would have thought that it would have been fairly straightforward to have the camshafts driven by spur gears which was common practice in the British motorcycle industry and lasted the life of the motorcycle. It may be a bit noisyer but this would have been a small price to pay for greatly increased reliability and safety. S&S would also not have incurred the costs and time required to develop the belt with Gates.
Whilst I have had tremendous pleasure completing the 9,000+ miles so far on my car, my pleasure is now turning the into trepidation at the prospect of one of the above bringing about my premature demise. And all this from a car for which we all paid a considerable amount of money, in good fath, from a reputable manufacturer, assuming all the bugs would have been ironed out before it went to market.
