Originally Posted by
Dervish
That's a good point, but my understanding of why steel has always been used for chassis is that it has a fatigue limit. I understand that Land Rover would've done their homework on this and designed for acceptable cycle life, but unlike steel there will be a cycle life. I'd like to believe the aluminium chassis is a step made purely in the belief that the vehicle will be better for having it, but I can't shake the feeling it is to get low emissions/fuel consumption/0-100km/h times and to hell with longevity.
Will an aluminium chassis bent if you hit it, or will it gouge - causing stress concentration points and dramatically reducing the cycle life? Can an aluminium chassis be repaired?
Steel has always been used for chassis because it is the most cost effective. Actually, steel has not always been the material of choice - in the early days of motoring, wood was a common chassis material, and in a few instances continued possibly as late as the 1970s - for example in some model Morgan sports cars.
Aluminium does not necessarily have a fatigue life (e.g. the alloy used on the DC-3), and steel does not necessarily not have one. It all depends on the alloy used and the structural design.
An aluminium chassis will bend if you hit it hard enough, same as a steel one - and will undoubtedly crack like the steel 130 ones do if overloaded with a poorly engineered tray. There is nothing to suggest that an aluminium chassis would be harder to repair than steel, except for slightly greater demands on welding equipment and skill. And the corrosion problem should be markedly less, meaning fewer repairs are required. It will gouge to a greater extent than does steel, but the effects of this can be neutralised by proper design.
John
John
JDNSW
1986 110 County 3.9 diesel
1970 2a 109 2.25 petrol
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