Posted on 10/12/2017 1:04:32 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Heated and cooled seats. Backup cameras. Panoramic glass roofs.
Not exactly what springs to mind when you think of a pickup. But that's what American truck buyers increasingly want, spending an average of $46,844 on a pickup, according to Kelley Blue Book. That's more than the starting price of luxury SUVs like the Mercedes GLC or the Lexus RX. In 2016, pickup trucks made up a little more than a third of all vehicles that sold for over $50,000.
At the State Fair of Texas this month, Ford Motor Co. is displaying its most expensive pickup yet: The F-Series Super Duty Limited, a luxury heavy-duty truck with a starting price of $80,835. It has custom two-tone leather seats, a heated steering wheel wrapped in hand-stitched leather and high-tech features like a 360-degree camera system that guides drivers when they're hitching up a trailer.
A fully-loaded F-450 — the biggest version of the Super Duty — will top out at $94,455. It's capable of towing an Air Force F-35 fighter plane, but it also has massaging seats.....
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Whoever told you that lied. Steel bead blasting would rapidly erode an aluminum body panel and would create bimetallic corrosion under the paint unless they surgically cleaned the aluminum.
You can have aluminum. Unless someone gifts me an original, in the white, cobra.
http://autobodystore.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-27936.html
I find that thread highly amusing as many of the examples of ‘see, see, Ford’s aluminum is to blame’ used there are of vehicles that at the time didn’t have a single aluminum panel. The Crown Vic so lovingly referenced never ever had an aluminum hood, and yes, the paint came off most of them, including my 2001 CVPI. Yes, it was steel. Yes, it came off exactly like these guys speculate the aluminum parts did.
The problem with Ford isn’t the aluminum. It’s (mostly) Ford’s paint and prep that’s the problem.
Meanwhile, I have two Honda motorcycles that are mostly aluminum, one that’s over 30 years old, and their paint seems to be staying on just fine.
I owned Honda CB 350s ( 2 )and a CB 750 k3 all from the 70s Only the engine/transmission contained aluminum. Frame, tank etc were steel.
Lots of painted aluminum on that bike - a 1986 Nighthawk S, like mine. The amount of aluminum on bikes would increase as time went on as the sportbike power and weight wars went on. Most of it would end up clearcoated or painted black at the factory. And the paint didn't fall off it.
To say nothing of the now exceedingly common painted aluminum wheels on every modern non-retro motorcycle. The paint hasn’t come off the aluminum wheels on either of my bikes, it hasn’t come off the painted aluminum engine parts, it hasn’t come off the aluminum rearsets, the aluminum brackets, the aluminum master cylinders, the aluminum control perches, etc., etc.
The problem isn’t aluminum. If it was it would have shown up by now for every maker.
I have a bell and a whistle in my ‘77 f150. :-)
I was a mechanic in various motorcycle shops in the 70s. One job I did, but hated, was lacing spokes into steel wheels. I still prefer the laced steel wheel look. But that’s for esthetics not performance. By 79 I was working in pharmaceuticals and left the bike world behind.
Towards the end of my term of bike repair, painted engines became the new thing. I also converted many bikes with contact points to electronic ignition.
“Forward Into The Fog”. Oat Willie.
The point is, painted aluminum is neither new nor a known durability issue. Poor execution is the problem, not anything inherent to the idea.
It’s no coincidence that pickups are more popular and are also exempt from the federal MPG requirements.
Anyway the wave of the future? .....carbon fiber.
Aluminum:
First vehicle I ever bought with my own money was a Chevy C-10. Bench seat, 3-on-the-column, no A/C, etc.
I loved “old blue”.
The funny thing is that GM spent the last couple years bashing Ford over the “weakness” of their new aluminum beds.
This year? GM’s new trucks all have aluminum beds. Whoops.
Dodge is projected to begin the move to aluminum for MY2019 when they start changing body panels from steel to aluminum.
CF isn’t a suitable material for truck beds because of what it does once its limits are exceeded. Once you get a crack, rip or tear in CF, the whole part just starts disintegrating/unraveling. Something the bike world is very familiar with, since no few bikes have had extensive carbon fiber parts in the last decade and a half.
Trucks are subject to Federal MPG requirements. Under Obama, they even had to be lumped in with cars and meet car requirements in the half-ton and lower class.
Manual transmission is your best anti theft device
You forgot one item:
Make a quality pickup with NO COMPUTER CHIPS IN THEM, AT ALL !
Am approached frequently with offers to buy it. I’ll have this truck until I die, and will leave it in my will.
I tend to agree in the here and now on carbon fiber. It is the wave of the future though. There are some great applications now but the field is wide open and the matrix possibilities are endless. There are chemistry departments at many major universities coming up with new ways to make it stronger.
http://compositesmanufacturingmagazine.com/2016/10/spacex-plans-travel-mars-carbon-fiber-spaceship/
Your F-150 has *many* computer chips in it. The dashboard is actually computerized even though it has analog needles on it (heavily computerized, go look up something called the Ford PSOM). The engine can’t run without its computer since you have EFI. Your transmission will either be a 4R70W/AOD-E or an E4OD, which can’t even go into gear without a computer running the solenoid pack. The 1995 radio/cassette deck was computerized. Even the lighting system is computerized if you have the Battery Sentinel or keyless entry features.
CF is already being used for an increasing number of body panels on cars, but it’s not suitable for a truck bed and is unlikely to be so for quite a while unless something new comes out. The strength isn’t the problem, the problem is what it does when it gets punctured or cracks.
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