4 ms·
You're overstating the difficulty/brittleness of "engineered" objects. I used to be around the rally racing scene, and it's utterly routine there to weld tons
by jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
You're overstating the difficulty/brittleness of "engineered" objects.
I used to be around the rally racing scene, and it's utterly routine there to weld tons of re-enforcements into the unibody. Most people with the money will straight up laminate the suspension mounts with plate. The safety cage makes the car incredibly rigid, as does replacing all bushings. The cars work just fine. The people doing this have relatively ordinary welding skills. Modern cars are not some sort of high tech magic that can't be modified or repaired with ordinary metalworking skills... it's just usually not cost effective to do so.
- jacquesm 6y agoThis is all true as long as the base material is steel. When you get into aluminum the number of people capable of producing good welds drops rapidly. But you are on the money with the cost effectiveness bit, that's exactly why it is perfectly possible to do these modifications with confidence: you are not operating under a budget that gets counted out to the last 1/10th of a cent, so you can do it right, even if it costs a few bucks more. Something a car company operating at scale would never do. Once the cost constraint disappears there isn't a whole lot you can't do.
- blagie 6y agoThere's a gap between: 1) reinforcing the whole car for a rally (which brings the car up to 1965 overengineered standards, and well beyond); and 2) simply welding two halves of a car together. If you were to weld two halves of a car together, and weld a ton of reinforcements into the unibody, it would very obviously work fine.