That new Ford F150 is going to cost you

hone eagle wrote:
Actally I was wrong, the bed is 100% al,but thick enough to be equal or better then steel.

Take it from someone who has had a al mast on a sailboat ,that material is very tough you couldn't dent it with a ball peen hammer - way way tougher then steel.
It is neither the same alloy or hardness as your typical beer can.

Drop a half cord of hardwood on it at -10 degrees...do that once a week for three months!

Buddies bought carbon fiber fishing rods vs the blanks I use to make my stuff...theirs about five times more than any fiberglass rod. I've made bamboo fly rods, so under stand about rod materials

Same buddies went to carbon windsurfer masts...another about five times my fiberglass mast....am still faster and on a +20 year old board to boot (sinker, inter island racer)

Truck frames CAN BE MADE OF ALU....but they would HUGE vs same rated steel

Reference carbon fiber bicycles as PLASTIC for the affect...OBTW that is also a correct
Monicker. As carbon fiber is just carbon fiber strands, spun into thread, then woven into cloth, then laminated into sheets using polyester epoxy, then baked under pressure
The same as fiberglass

Like while in buddies toy and bicycle shop...customer was there yelling at his service staff
He took a very expensive carbon fiber bike on the train commute to SF and it cracked
Told him not the shops fault, but his for taking a plastic bike on a commuter train
Where others lay their steel n ALU bikes on each other...that is where coined plastic
In reference to CB

Material science....like lead is better than iron for bullet slugs. Better yet would be depleted uranium, but there are down sides...like radiation

All materials can be used just about anywhere...it is in the plus/minus decision making

Does anybody know the alloy Ford is using ?
and no 'military grade 'is not a answer
anybody

how thick ?

anybody

rivets?
glue ?
welding?


anybody

all I read is bad bad idea

whats it going to cost to insure will tell a tale

Ben
re carbon fiber and tension /compression , are you aware that all high end racing yacht sailboat masts are carbon .......and in massive (K tons) compression?

we all have more to learn eh?

Interesting about the al. hood on the mustang. Like the egoboost, like to see one after 6 years and 150,000 plus miles. New ideas are great as long as it does not come back and bite you after the warranty is up and by then they are on to another great idea !!

The Mustang has an aluminum hood. My friend owned one and noticed a few bubbles under the paint and he had me look at them. He took it to the dealer to have it fixed. Not 6 months later they apeared again in the same spots. I have my aviation maintenance licence and I have worked with aluminum. This is a well known condition called intergranular corosion. The only cure is replacement of the part. I hope Ford is ready to either use high quality aluminum or deal with all the claims that will flood in on this.

bid_time wrote:

catfishmontana wrote:
I can't believe you guys are worried about aluminum. You guys are really going to flip in a few years when carbon fiber takes over. There are already lots of carbon fiber exotics, and it's trickling down. My mustang has a carbon fiber driveshaft. My snowmobile has a carbon fiber overstructure and bumper.

I was thinking the same thing. At that time there will be a post complaining about why they didn't keep the aluminum.

Some new ideas work, some don't. Here are the some that don't.

Famous last words:

Ford Motor Co's all-new Power Stroke 6L turbo diesel V-8 wins a 2003 Ward's 10 best Engines award not because it's a diesel accessible to everyone, but because it's the best current example of how good a diesel can be when the best of current diesel technologies converge.

Why do we need lifeboats on an unsinkable ship? Unsinkable technologies aboard this ship say these are useless.

Why put all this money into redesigning a fuel tank? Lets just pay off a few people when their family members get burnt to a crisp. It will cost us $137 million for a recall and only $49 million for a payoff. Lets make some money.

NASA spends billions of dollars in R&D and you want to keep this bird on the ground because it's a little cold today? 5, 4, 3, 2, 1........

The Edsel was not only a superior product (as compared to Oldsmobile/Buick competition), but the details of its styling and specifications were the result of a sophisticated market analysis and research and development effort that would essentially guarantee it broad acceptance by the buying public when the car was introduced.

With over 4 years and 10 million miles of testing the 6.4; the 6.4 diesel is better than the outgoing 6.0 in everyway.

Is the aluminum body F150 going to be a 6.0 or a 7.3? Only time will tell. :B

wcjeep wrote:
Some time ago I was watching a documentary on aluminum use in airplanes. It mentioned the cracking problem. Boeing got around this issue with thicker material. It also mentioned all aluminum had an end date. The aluminum can only withstand stress for a set period of time. Steel does not have an end date. Steel can continue to work.

Neither material has an end "date". What they do have is a limit to how many times they can be stressed to a given percent of yield strenght. Steel can take an infinite number of stress cycles if the stress is kept to 50% or less of its yield strength. Aluminum does have a limited number of cycles at any stress level but the number does get very large with lower loads. Keep in mind that we are talking body panels here, not frame or axle components. How often do you stress your fender?

Steel does have other limits to its life, mainly rust. I would love to replace the bed on both of my trucks but cannot afford a new one and all of the used ones I can find are rusted out. Neither truck has every had any body work done to it so right now on a new truck I would rather have a rust resistant material than one that is easy to repair. Life is full of tradeoffs and personal preferences. Drivers that wreck a lot may well prefer the steel.

I do have two aluminum trailers already and they both seem to be tougher that steel equivalents. Also, things don't seem to slide around as much on the aluminum as they do on steel. I would welcome that in a pickup bed.

Alu ages differently than steel...both have issues, just differences

Serious off roaders, or those who know via hard knock schooling, only run steel
wheels...or knowing the weakness of alu in that application, don't go fast out there

Why I'll not take my plastic bicycle (+$7K carbon fiber) on the train. Have taken
my alu bicycle, but prefer taking my steel Coastie on the train with no worries

Many get mixed up with the marketing (factual) claims that Carbon Fiber, etc
has higher strength than steel...on that application and usually in tension only

Understand and accept alu for a 'truck' body (passenger portion), but I'll not
touch the working 'bed' to alu...sure make it thick enough, but then it will
weigh much more and then why?...as that then defeat the whole purpose of going
alu to lighten it

Alu body work requires a much higher level of know-how. Back to off roader not
wanting alu wheels. I've pounded a steel wheel bent hitting boulders and know
that an alu wheel would have cracked hitting it, or crack pounding it back.
Alu work hardens much quicker than steel. Even dead soft alu and worse any that
has been hardened to T6

Since it requires a higher paid body shop person, and higher levels of 'stuff'
(mainly welding) and often toss and replace with new...will cost more to fix
than steel sheetmetal

Plastic bodied truck (carbon fiber) will be even more expensive and more totaled
trucks/SUVs. Not crumple zone designed, as plastic explodes doing 'crumple zone'
duties...but a person who can afford an Aventador should be able to afford the
repair cost or a new one...approx $400,000.00

catfishmontana wrote:
I can't believe you guys are worried about aluminum. You guys are really going to flip in a few years when carbon fiber takes over. There are already lots of carbon fiber exotics, and it's trickling down. My mustang has a carbon fiber driveshaft. My snowmobile has a carbon fiber overstructure and bumper.

I was thinking the same thing. At that time there will be a post complaining about why they didn't keep the aluminum.