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Yea, Dave, BUT '98 was just yesterday compared to when those castings were poured. :-) AND contrary to some opinions I have read here, metal does not "age" and get weak. IF it was good metal in the first place. Bigest problem with metal as time goes by is a thing call migration. That is when impurities in the metal slowly mirgate out of the parent metal crystals to the boundaries between the crystals. This causes great internal stress that can, over time, litteraly break the metal. Migration is accelerated by heat and cold makes metals more brittle, so tempreture cycling is bad. The hot cycle lets the impurities migrate and the cold cycle makes the metal more brittle or sensitive to stress. Old Lional trains often have this problem. The "pot metal" they were made from got contanimated by the recycling of waste metal back into the melt. A cost cutting procedure, but ultimately very costly when that RARE train has a huge crack in the frame. On cars you will see it in the old emblums, names, etc. that were used to "decorate" the older cars. Example, I had a '63 Dart where the "Dart" name that was on the fender now just says "D". The rest has broken off from age. Of course, iron is much stronger than the zinc and similar metals used in the "pot metals" used in die casting. So I am not aware of cast iron cracking from internal stress, but in theory I guess it could under the right conditions. Regards,
Larry
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