this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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Has anyone come up with a guess on the cost of swapping out an entire cast body section vs replacing or refurbishing the parts that would be there without the cast?
I think point is without the cast body section you could just replace broken parts which may be significantly less. In practice though I don't think it matters that much. Small accidents hopefully don't damage the frame and if they do it's often a bit dubious repairing it.
Yeah, I think once you get to the point where the car needs the frame worked on, it's probably going to get scrapped whether it has a cast frame or not.
.. on a 1st world country.
we definetly do those kinds of repairs over here
Except for trucks
Hmm, yes. Some trucks with broken or bent frames get patched up and driven.
Probably because trucks are industrial vehicles built to be driven millions of km*, and therefore are a much bigger investment, so the repair is more often "worth it" than for personal vehicles.
Also, one truck can have the cargo capacity of many cargo vans, and one bus in pendular movement has the capacity of many personal cars, so each truck/bus repair will have a greater impact.
*At least, that's the case for buses, according to a schoolbus driver when I was a kid.
This is for cars and small SUVs. The trucks still have frames. The cars and small SUVs are already unibodies. Just not multi-segmented unibodies. The two differences are that its multi-segmented, and the metal is cast, instead of forged in a stamping press.
people have repaired frames for a long time.
What this seems like is it would replace things that are normally spot welded or glued together, things I can think off the top of my head that are like this are the front radiator support and strut towers in various cars. When these items are bent or rusted you can usually buy these peices. See skyline r34 strut tower rust issues. On this new proposed design your options would be to replace the whole front or rear third of your car, or precision cutting and welding a piece in, which may be inaccessable because of the casting design.
Now there I can see how this design might make more problems than it solves. Bending the mounts of different parts might total the car.
Welding a casting is a lot more dubious even if you can access it easily. If the original material was welded together chances are it can be rewelded without much issue. Most successfull welds in cast material I've seen have been in compression, it tends to split around the weld when you put it under tension.
The problem is that you'd have to pretty much disassemble half the vehicle to replace a cast part, and that will be thousands extra in labor.
Considering that the cast part is practically half the vehicle, I wonder if it is easier to change out the cast vs several frame parts.
The frame is a much smaller portion of the vehicle than these cast parts.
Once a frame is damaged the vehicle often gets totalled out because it would be so much to replace, basically disassemble the vehicle or try to repair the frame and have poor safety risks from then on.
These casts are a lot more than where a frame is. Damage to the casts will happen from accidents that never would have damaged a normal frame.
Not on a unibody.
My guess is increase part cost but reduce repair labor. Similar to replacing transmission or engine today. Not worth it for a shop to usually do the repairs them selves but replace the whole unit and send off to a remanufacturing plant