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Author: Subject: 1.5 or 2mm section steel
thor101

posted on 5/1/12 at 11:54 AM Reply With Quote
1.5 or 2mm section steel

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.
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MikeR

posted on 5/1/12 at 01:00 PM Reply With Quote
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.

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TAZZMAXX

posted on 5/1/12 at 02:25 PM Reply With Quote
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.

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Chippy

posted on 5/1/12 at 04:24 PM Reply With Quote
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





To make a car go faster, just add lightness. Colin Chapman - OR - fit a bigger engine. Chippy

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Peteff

posted on 5/1/12 at 04:26 PM Reply With Quote
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.





yours, Pete

I went into the RSPCA office the other day. It was so small you could hardly swing a cat in there.

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thor101

posted on 5/1/12 at 05:27 PM Reply With Quote
Whats the differance between RHS and ERW?
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MikeRJ

posted on 5/1/12 at 05:39 PM Reply With Quote
quote:
Originally posted by thor101
Whats the differance between RHS and ERW?


Started typing out a long reply, but remembered this thread from quite a few years back and actually managed to find it!

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