On Sun, 26 Jun 2016 08:59:23 -0400, wrote:

On Sun, 26 Jun 2016 01:44:55 -0700, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Sat, 25 Jun 2016 22:57:17 -0400, wrote:

On Sat, 25 Jun 2016 14:02:13 -0700, Gunner Asch
wrote:

On Sat, 25 Jun 2016 12:34:48 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Thursday, April 16, 2015 at 7:52:04 PM UTC-4, Ed Huntress wrote:
I just got back from an engineering conference in Detroit on
"lightweighting" cars and trucks, which was an exceptionally good one,
but one mundane fact set me back in my chair. Ford has four stamping
plants making body parts for the new aluminum F-150. At the biggest
one, at the old Rouge plant, their stamping line fills an
11-ton-capacity truck with aluminum stamping scrap every 20 minutes.
The trucks are lined up to haul it back to the mills.

That's a lot of aluminum. All of the US and European car makers have
high-quantity aluminum vehicles in the works ...

"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 Chevy engineer drops a large toolbox into the bed of each truck at such an angle 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 sporting events and at 2,400 movie theaters"

-- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...uminum-pickups

('GM Airs Attack Ads That Poke Holes in Ford’s Aluminum Pickups' by David Welch June 8, 2016 — 3:30 PM EDT Bloomberg )

"Chevy has several ads which the company says are exhibiting field
tests done internally by GM. In another ad, a load of 55 landscaping
bricks is dropped five feet into the beds of each truck, again denting
the Silverado and putting a few holes in the F-150. Truck owners
usually don’t drop large bricks from such a height."

On the other hand....no one usually drops a tool box or a large valve
or a piece of steel etc etc into the back of a pickup truck...but if
you look at half the pickup trucks on the road used for "work", you
will find dings and dents and places where exactly that happened. No
one plans on "xxxxxx" but **** does happen. Good of Chevy to point
that out.

Im sure someone with a waterjet or laser could make a reasonable
income cutting a sheet of 5/16" aluminum or 3/16" steel (plain or
diamond plate), perfectly fit for putting down, in the back of the
new Fords. Wouldnt add much weight and would prevent bed damage.


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The bed on my pickup has never seen the light of day. It has a tough
polymer slip-in liner that takes any abuse, protecting the steel bed.

are they better or worse than the sprayed in Rino Liner type coatings?


Significantly better as they are not bonded to the steel. They can
move a bit by themselves to absorb shock - and with ridges are almost
an inch thick

Which bed liners are those? Virtually every liner Ive seen had a
uniform thickness of about 1/8" thick. They are occasionally found
on the side of the freeways, blown out of the back of pickup trucks.


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