Ed. OK. Aluminum need help to burn. So do most things. Its my fault that I didn't say that.
OK. But look at steel. Its still there after a terrible car fire. You can still salvage stuff... keep structural integrity. Sell used parts.
Meanwhile, with almost everything Aluminum? It can make things unnecessarily crazy and worse. Who wants to see their vehicle in solidified puddles running down the street and into other cars on the parking lot (causing whatever else?) I don't like it.
In this case, it takes a LOT of help -- not just other fuels, but oxidizers, such as oxygen. Note that Lloyd's example involved propellants plus oxidizers to get aluminum "droplets" to then burn in air -- for some unspecified amount of time. But you can't start burning sheet, plate, or castings in air.
If the fire is significant, you can't salvage parts. The steels used in today's cars lose their strength and integrity at around 900 deg. F. No insurance company is going to allow the re-use of those parts, or they won't insure it.
Steel does NOT keep its structural integrity in a significant fire. The yield strength of steels used in cars today -- HSLA, DP, and AHSS, drops from 100,000 - 200,000 kpsi to around 40,000 kpsi or less after it's heated to 1,000 deg. F. Car fires involve higher temperatures than that. Aluminum melts at around 1,200 deg. F.
Don't worry, you'll never see it, because it doesn't happen that way. When it touches the ground, it solidifies.
There were many fuels in that truck. Not only oil and gas. There was Freon and transmission and brake oils. There were carbon based hoses and carbon base roof liner, seats, fillers, rugs, plastic and rubber products abound. Let us not forget the plastic wire covering.
To the credit, the trailer didn't burn from what scorch marks were seen. Just a hot spot where oil base roadway was consumed and scorched badly.
The tires are missing - I guess they went up in smoke once they melted.
I think a fireman would see many possible fuels sourcing the meltdown...
Mart> snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca fired this volley in
"Chevy?s ads show the bed of the Ford F-150 cracking when heavy or sharp objects are dropped into it, while the [Chevy] Silverado ends up with just a few dents, scratches and, in one case, pinholes. In one video, a Ch evy engineer drops a large toolbox into the bed of each truck at such an an gle that it dents in the Silverado and puts a hole in the bed of the Ford. The campaign is big, too, airing online, on television during major sportin g events and at 2,400 movie theaters"
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('GM Airs Attack Ads That Poke Holes in Ford?s Aluminum Pickups' by David Welch June 8, 2016 ? 3:30 PM EDT Bloomberg )
I saw the ad. It's a little bit phony, but it does point out that the stiffness of aluminum can work against it on a truck bed. The steel is thin, so it bends and dents. The aluminum resists bending (it's a lot thicker) and winds up puncturing locally if you hit it with something sharp, becase it doesn't bend and distribute the force like the steel.
Ford may have to change the way they make that bed, but reports from the field haven't noted many problems. Meantime, they were selling like crazy until the recent gas-price increases, in which all SUV and truck sales are down.
I'm going to be visiting their engineers later this year. I'm interested in what they have to say about it.
Yet they've been usung aluminum dump boxes almost exclusively now for how many years? If Ford used something like 6061T6 or T651 for the bed floors they'd be stronger than the Chebbie.
Ha! I wonder what the sheet metal looks like under that composite bed liner. You can't tell.
Maybe this will be the new test for pickup trucks -- how many masonry blocks you can dump into them with a front-end loader without doing damage.
They have to do something. Ford was pounding them in the marketplace before the gas-price incerases. They may still be; I haven't looked at comparative sales figures for a couple of months.
They do. It's a proprietary alloy, but it's close to high-temper 6061.
The issue actually is kind of complicated. "Stronger" in what way? The aluminum resists being sprung or bent better than the thinner steel used in other makes.
But that stiffness tends to localize any load, and minimizing springy displacement means that the specific load (the load per square inch, for example) winds up being higher, which can exceed the yield point more easily and make a permanent bend or dent. Or even tear it..
So the aluminum is stronger is some ways, but not in others. Chevy chose to impose those loads in a way that makes them look better. If you drop a pallet of bricks in there, I'll bet that the aluminum Ford can handle more bricks before the bed buckles.
Don't give them any ideas. Ford and Chevy already are battling at LeMans.
Did you see that race, BTW? The new Ford GTs looked great -- beat the Corvettes and the Ferraris. And they were using the stock-block EcoBoost 3.5 liter engine.
The 6061T6 skid plates we had on the old 510 rallye car took one heck of a beating withour denting OR pucturing. (The 510 was the car my brother navigated with a different driver before we teamed up with the S&S R12)
Ol' Weird Ed + his favorite, gun-grabbing, liberal, NYC mayor's site? Typical.
Very true. Marketing trick after the question was asked by Chebby: What can we do to steal sales from Ford?
True.
Oh, horseshit. See exploding Pinto and Chebby truck gas tank wars, etc. Chebby can't compete with the massive sales of the F-150 (and it never has) so it has to do nasty ads.
Jacques can't be bothered to check attributes, and appears to agree with Wieber that using up to about 20% of a pickup's load capacity for an aux bed floor is a good idea. If only there were more losers... I mean minds of such very great intelligence, I would have a better chance of getting elected.
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