Can anyone offer some guidance an the best thickness steel for the chassis, I can not get 16g or 1.6mm only 1.5mm or 2mm not sure if 1.5 would be strong enough and wondered if 2mm would be too heavy.
Let someone else confirm this but ....
16g or 1.6mm steel is probably 1.5mm due to the fact it can be made to a tollerence and 1.5mm is the bottom end of the tollerence. If the steel is
definatly 1.5mm you'll be ok. If its 1.5mm and has a tollerence then you'll possibly find its actually 1.4mm.
People have made chassis out of 1.2mm (i think) steel. These are usually race chassis with lightweight bike engines - ie not for the stresses of road
driving with heavy engines, pot holes and speed bumps. They also crack after a while.
Lets face it, 0.1mm difference or 0.004" in old money (thickness of a human hair) is not a lot. I'm using 1.5mm ERW in my Haynes chassis
(moss & lichen growing on it at the moment!) but that is only having a 4 cylinder car engine in it. If I were to have gone for a straight six or a
V8 I'd probably have use 2mm as it would be slightly more resistant to twisting with the added torque. I don't think that it's anything
to be overly concerned with, the main thing being sound welds to hold it all together.
All those old imperial sizes are still listed by most stockists but you will struggle to get the ones you think you should. Every now and again you
can get some oddball sizes but there are normally historic reasons for this i.e a high demand form a certain manufacturer over a long production
period.
Following from what MikeR has said, I've just put my vernier across a bit of 25 x 25 x 1.5mm and it does actually measure 1.39/1.43 so it is
slightly under. It'll be fine though.
I used 1.5 mm on my chassis, and that is supporting a "F" heavy V6. The car is just coming up to its third MOT, so 6 years on the road and no problems to date. HTH Ray
Our local steel stockist has 1" 16g and 25mm RHS and the only difference I can see is the metric stuff has squarer corners. I would quite happily use the 1.5mm wall rather than 2mm.
Whats the differance between RHS and ERW?
quote:
Originally posted by thor101
Whats the differance between RHS and ERW?