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  #41  
Old 05-25-2011, 09:30 PM
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Richard K Richard K is offline
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David,

Just to assure you that you still have a connection, I'll answer. And that answer is; I do'nt know for sure.

Having built many items of tubing and light materials; I would think there was a wide variation used. The designers I have been able to find info about; often provided only bare minimum drawings to the coach shops. They knew their coach builders and trusted them to execute their designs.

Thus I would suspect the sizes and wall thicknesses were selected based on the coachbuilders habits and good judgement. Availability of material and tools to bend with probably played a large part in selection.

I would be suprised if anything other than welded mild steel tubing was used. Cost, availability and relative strength would move my decision toward mild steel.

As for wall thickness, my catalogs show about a 30 percent weight increase as I go from 18 gauge to 14 Gauge. That might amount to 25 lbs in a particular car. When one considers the additional strength of the heavier wall; the weight may be offset by abilities to eliminate some intermediate supports.

That's my non answer. Perhaps tube sizes are a non factor.
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  #42  
Old 05-26-2011, 07:47 AM
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Kerry Pinkerton Kerry Pinkerton is offline
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David,

I'll share what I've gleaned from my research. Keep in mind this I've never actually SEEN a superleggera car...

Frequently the body panel was wrapped over and allowed to 'float' OR rivets or screws were used. Sometimes a beauty panel was used to hide the screws.

If an aluminum body with aluminum substructure it was frequently welded directly to the substructure or it was screwed also. They didn't worry much about corrosion...
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  #43  
Old 05-29-2011, 06:27 AM
John Buchtenkirch John Buchtenkirch is offline
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I worked on a superleggera Ferrari maybe 20 years ago. All it was is thin aluminum folded around some small aluminum tubing and the whole mess was covered with Bondo. Quality was amazingly low, you could open the door (if you could call it that, just a skin with a tubing edge) and the back of it would drop an inch. About the only nice thing I could say about it was that it was very light but I was convinced at the time that the whole mess was made on a tree stump by teenagers . It was certainly never intended to be a streetable body. ~ John Buchtenkirch
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  #44  
Old 09-12-2011, 10:15 PM
mtlmanalex mtlmanalex is offline
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Default superleggera

i worked for ac cars in the eighties , in weybridge , the original bucks from thames ditton were there , very detailed . the frame was built to ac/ shelby specs from the '60's 4" main tubes , the superstructure was .063 wall mild steel seamless tube , hand bent to a former then assambled in a jig . the front clip and rear assy had just one join in the middle of the rocker , doors bonnet and boot made separately on the original wooden bucks . we used to make a front in about 2 1/2 weeks , a rear in 2 , all wheeled , never saw a yoder / planishing hammer til i came to america . all gas welded too , a lot of the time no filler rod , we would just fuse the panels together and run them out on the wheel , quick scuff with some 80 paper , and off to the paint shop . it was very much a production setup , we averaged a car a week completed , i really miss wheeling and welding , i just don't do it enough now to be that good at it . i'll try and dig out some old pictures of the bodies and bucks , theyr'e pretty old scanned pics but you'll get the idea . as for rivets , we just used stainless pop rivets , the frames were powder coated , but in reality these cars were destined to be show pieces , probably never need to worry about them getting wet .
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  #46  
Old 02-12-2015, 01:03 PM
vroom vroom is offline
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The Locost guys who are building Lotus 7 replicas and have seen lots of rusted out chassis tubes on 'ol Colin's products might take tube interior rust more seriously. One proposed trick is to coat the insides using mineral spirits with wax dissolved in it. Pouring the solution into one end of a full length tube and pulling a rag thru the tube to coat it end to end. This works great. The wax lubes your saw blade when you cut the tube to length and condenses on the inside of the welded areas after welding. Cleaning your welding joint area isn't that hard as the stuff pretty much stays where applied.
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  #47  
Old 02-12-2015, 05:26 PM
Maxakarudy Maxakarudy is offline
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Great old thread revisited/revived, so many talented craftsmens comments seldom combined in to one posting.
Max, you've been quiet for a while, still restoring Astons?
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  #48  
Old 02-12-2015, 05:48 PM
flakey flakey is offline
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I've worked on a few aston martins, I get on really well with them, they do suffer really badly from corrosion though. we restored the body on a lancia zagatto a few years back, the build quality of the steelwork was shocking it looked like a training ground for the apprentices. Hopefully pic attached of a DB4 mk5 we done last year,

image.jpg
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Last edited by Steve Hamilton; 02-12-2015 at 07:31 PM.
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  #49  
Old 10-15-2016, 11:15 AM
longyard longyard is offline
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Thanks for posting these. They are very informative. I appreciate your noting the difference between Touring and Scaglietti methods.
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  #50  
Old 10-15-2016, 11:44 AM
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Kerry Pinkerton Kerry Pinkerton is offline
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thanks for the photos Mark. I love seeing superleggera builds. Is this work you did?
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