NBC Big lie about squarebodies. Fake news
CK5
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NBC Dateline gas tank explosion
- Thread starter wazzabie
- Start date
Old news. Funny though, I brought this up to my Mom yesterday trying to demonstration the BS of the news industry.
I remember when the gas tank thing was a big deal. GM sent me a "special" offer for a discount if I bought a brand new truck and traded in my '82 so they could crush it. Can't remember what the offer was now, it was the mid '90's. I don't think it was very much. No chance I was going to take it anyway, I was 18 and couldn't hardly afford gas much less a new truck payment. I guess it wasn't a very good offer or all the side tank trucks would be gone.
Reminds me of the "suzuki samurai rollover", yes it did come up on 2 wheels on video.... after about 90 attempts to make it do so.
Didn't they do the same to Jeep CJs?
All Nader's fault.
Yeah my dad got one of those offers for my truck back then, I think it was like $1000. He laughed it off, thankfully.
I remember towing a truck that had been hit in the left side. The tank was leaking as it had been hit hard enough, but no fire, and no one was nervous even though we were in a short tunnel.
Quite ironic, since it was after that news story.
Quite ironic, since it was after that news story.
The tank burst but it didn't have primer cord, so no danger.
I keep feeling older and older.........
No one here remembers the "rockets" that one of the news bunch, I think NBC attached to the gas tank of one of the Ford cars, I want to say Pinto, but its been way too long.
The car was rammed from the rear and the tank exploded. But someone noticed something strange about the video. Turns out, when you looked closely, you could see a few small rocket motors attached to the tank and firing just before the impact.
I did find an article where they did the same thing to the GM truck that exploded when hit on camera. Someone spotted fuel shooting out of the tank before the car hit it.
In that case, they put rocket motors inside the tank.
I can't find where they got caught in the Pinto fake, but I remember seeing still frame that showed the rockets attached to outside of the tank and firing just as it was hit.
Pretty sure that was in the 70's, so I guess that they figured after 20 years, as long as they put the rocket inside the tank, no one would ever know........
Here is a link to the article. Can't find one on the Pinto. The difference between the truck and the Pinto, was that the tank on the Pinto was actually in a bad spot and badly protected. So they knew it would rupture. Thus they could put the rockets on the outside.
The truck might not rupture, so they put them inside. Plus less likely to be seen.
www.carthrottle.com
No one here remembers the "rockets" that one of the news bunch, I think NBC attached to the gas tank of one of the Ford cars, I want to say Pinto, but its been way too long.
The car was rammed from the rear and the tank exploded. But someone noticed something strange about the video. Turns out, when you looked closely, you could see a few small rocket motors attached to the tank and firing just before the impact.
I did find an article where they did the same thing to the GM truck that exploded when hit on camera. Someone spotted fuel shooting out of the tank before the car hit it.
In that case, they put rocket motors inside the tank.
I can't find where they got caught in the Pinto fake, but I remember seeing still frame that showed the rockets attached to outside of the tank and firing just as it was hit.
Pretty sure that was in the 70's, so I guess that they figured after 20 years, as long as they put the rocket inside the tank, no one would ever know........
Here is a link to the article. Can't find one on the Pinto. The difference between the truck and the Pinto, was that the tank on the Pinto was actually in a bad spot and badly protected. So they knew it would rupture. Thus they could put the rockets on the outside.
The truck might not rupture, so they put them inside. Plus less likely to be seen.
How NBC Exposed a Serious Problem with GM Products
It’s pretty obvious that fake news is common today. Such culprits are CNN, Fox News, And in this case, Dateline. Now, Dateline is known to report news, but we all know them for their murder cases and the famous “To Catch a Predator” (Well, except for those IIHS segments that I like to binge...
I have a pic of my 87 I was broadside in. No explosion.
Little old blue hair in an old full size merc ran the red light and smashed me about 35. Knocked me out for a minute or 5...my head bounced of the B pillar. Hit the drivers side.
That lying ass Brian Williams. There's been some great memes about him. He comes up with some funny bullshit sometimes. Problem is he thinks it really happened.
Little old blue hair in an old full size merc ran the red light and smashed me about 35. Knocked me out for a minute or 5...my head bounced of the B pillar. Hit the drivers side.
That lying ass Brian Williams. There's been some great memes about him. He comes up with some funny bullshit sometimes. Problem is he thinks it really happened.
Wow. Apology is not appropriate. News agencies need to be held to the highest standard. Something like this should result in the feds ushering everyone out of the building as they chain the doors shut. Doors stay shut until new owners and management and new anchors, new journalists explain to congress how much air time the trials of everyone who was involved will be getting, and how their integrity and dedication will prevent them from suffering the same fate. There should be a mandate that in order to keep their business open, every year they will air a special dedicated to the networks shame, and shaming all the convicts who had been involved.
Funny this was brought up. I was working at Chevrolet Customer Assistance when the Dateline story aired. I had only been there 2-3 months and was otherwise fresh out of college.
We were prepped to the story the day before the show aired. We had a script to follow if the question was asked. If I remember right the class action lawsuit over the same thing was coming to a close too around the same time. We had info on the settlement and where to direct the customers to so they could get the certificate if they wanted one.
The certificate was for $1000 off a new GM car or truck (excluding Saturn). If you passed it off to someone else it lost half the value. It was worthless if it changed hands more than three times.
I know this, the call volume that next day tripled what was normal. The fever died off after a few days.
Later when I was there Dateline did another expose on the big 3's secret recall on paint peeling. The BS about that was at GM it wasn't secret. It was a known special policy that the dealers were well aware of. Still we took call after call of people complaining about the paint falling off. There were obvious stipulations to the policy, most importantly it was only valid for the original owner of the vehicle. Next it had to fail a "tape test". This was where the dealer applied standard masking tape to each horizontal surface. Peeled the tape of and if the tape brought paint up with it GM repainted the horizontal sections of the car. The problem didn't seem to occur on the vertical surfaces.
Yes it was a flimsy, cheesey way to address an obvious problem that was linked back to the primer used at the time. Anybody that has owned a early to mid 90's GM car or truck has seen what the paint does. It falls off in sheets. Some colors did it more than others. I got to defend GM's insane policy on it and took endless flack for it on the phone. If they didn't buy it new, you advise them and shut it down. If they did you directed them to a dealer to get the tape test done and the dealer took it from there.
I will not watch Dateline to this day over the obvious crap they pulled.
We were prepped to the story the day before the show aired. We had a script to follow if the question was asked. If I remember right the class action lawsuit over the same thing was coming to a close too around the same time. We had info on the settlement and where to direct the customers to so they could get the certificate if they wanted one.
The certificate was for $1000 off a new GM car or truck (excluding Saturn). If you passed it off to someone else it lost half the value. It was worthless if it changed hands more than three times.
I know this, the call volume that next day tripled what was normal. The fever died off after a few days.
Later when I was there Dateline did another expose on the big 3's secret recall on paint peeling. The BS about that was at GM it wasn't secret. It was a known special policy that the dealers were well aware of. Still we took call after call of people complaining about the paint falling off. There were obvious stipulations to the policy, most importantly it was only valid for the original owner of the vehicle. Next it had to fail a "tape test". This was where the dealer applied standard masking tape to each horizontal surface. Peeled the tape of and if the tape brought paint up with it GM repainted the horizontal sections of the car. The problem didn't seem to occur on the vertical surfaces.
Yes it was a flimsy, cheesey way to address an obvious problem that was linked back to the primer used at the time. Anybody that has owned a early to mid 90's GM car or truck has seen what the paint does. It falls off in sheets. Some colors did it more than others. I got to defend GM's insane policy on it and took endless flack for it on the phone. If they didn't buy it new, you advise them and shut it down. If they did you directed them to a dealer to get the tape test done and the dealer took it from there.
I will not watch Dateline to this day over the obvious crap they pulled.
I wonder if there were some good deals to be found back then when this story was broadcast. People rush to sell there chevy's at steep discounts.
Dateline is still around today. Claims to be a legal reality TV show. They don't really care. All they acknowledge was the placing of the fire device was bad. The entire story was fake news.
Dateline is still around today. Claims to be a legal reality TV show. They don't really care. All they acknowledge was the placing of the fire device was bad. The entire story was fake news.
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I don't remember the market was flooded with dangerous C/K trucks being sold when the class action lawsuit was going on. Then again I was in Detroit around that time and there weren't a lot of those trucks running around there that were decent due to the rampant rust. They were either swiss cheese rusty or somebody's baby they were keeping out of the salt in the winter.
I'd say back in the rust belt there was more potential for fire from rotting tanks and fuel lines leaking than the location of the tanks.
I got two of those offer letters because I had two rust free southern California square bodies at the time. One was a 1977 C30 single cab Dually, and the other was a 1986 K30 SRW single cab. Both of those trucks where worth way more than they where offering.
