If a chassis had welded in steel panels of say 0.5mm or 0.7mm thick rather than 19mm tubular diagonals, would it be as stiff?

Neglect the problems of welded in panels for now. I seem to recall that Cymtriks did this in the transmission tunnel. Could it be applied elsewhere?

should be stiffer but probably a bit heavier. it is called stressed skin construction, if you do the whole car with that then you end up with a stressed skin monocoque which should be very strong indeed!
i would think what deters people form doing this is the extra work involved in welding all the panels in, you need to be patient because of the obvious problems with welding thin sheet.
you could probably counteract the extra weight by reducing the gauge on the tubes as well without loosing too much strenghh.



russ.

Hi

It doesn't have to be done in steel. Careful selection of materials and attachment can significantly improve things AND be light.



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Cheers Matt

I assume thats an LA gold chassis? Good to see someone as done something about floppy cockpit area typical of locosts, westys etc...

Didn't they build F1 cars like that for a while (ally rather than steel though) before carbon fibre came in

I was going to post similar to matt yesterday, lotus made common use of ally panelled stressed skin as a number of the engineers in the early days were aircraft designers by trade.

I dont know nowadays if there are good enough (garage suitable) adhesives for it to work without the rivets?

Im intending to bond mine on but Im not sure Id be happy skipping the triangulation behind it