i was having a discussion today with a fabricator friend of mine. i was telling him about building a frame for my 79 yota and he mentioned using aluminum. soooo, the plan for my 79 yota is a full aluminum frame, fully tig welded and polished. now i just need to finish up the 86.....any opinions?

 

Fully polished and TIG'ed frame....... sure beats painting it. I think it would look awsome man.... but think of the time... But all in all id love to see it done!

 

that would be absolutely sick.

 

well, cutting aluminum is faster than cutting steel. and the speed of tig welding steel and aluminum is about the same. i weld a ton of aluminum and prefer it over steel. plus my friend offered to help. the thing i'm mostly thinking of is the cost!

 

Hahaha yea that would get pricey. Now i know nothing about TIG welding but dont you go through tips pretty fast.. and there not cheap either right?

 

not if you know how to do it. the tungstun is a little expensive but its not a consumable. when a person is learning to tig they have a tendency to contaminate the tungstun with filler rod or dip it in the puddle. usually all that requires is dressing the tungstun.

 

Ahhhhh i c. See you learn something new everyday!

 

why not? audi does it

i think that'd score huge in uniqueness since i havent really heard of or seen anyone do it before..... hell, there are aluminum buggies made all the time...... chromolly, stainless, and all sorts of different stuff so why not aluminum?

it may be pricey but, thinking about how extensive and custom your project direction is going.... why not make it stand out for reals in a uncommon place?

 

you do that and i'll think of doing titanium aluminum alloy..... wow... will probably cost more than 100 minis together

 

i thought of stainless as well. my friend builds custom stainless pool tables that sell for $20k, and stainless poker tables that sell for $8k. he would be happy if it were stainless but that would cost more than the aluminum. plus it would be heavy as hell.

 

yea, i think a good aluminum frame is gonna be trick and light! i'd be interested to know exactly how much lighter that would end up at.

 

from what i've seen a lot of steel frames are 2"x3"x1/8". since aluminum is softer than steel you generally would go 1.5x the thickness of the steel structure. so i will probably use2x3x3/16 aluminum. it should be about 35% lighter than the steel frame. in reality i'm not worried about saving weight. if i dump all the money in the aluminum frame the truck is going to be a garage piece, and rarely driven. but it will look cool!

 

so...i dont get what the point is? lol

 

it would be different, and look cool. plus tig welding on aluminum is just plain fun!

 

and when you drag frame itll create those cool looking white sparks x100

 

lol...when would u ever even see the frame?

 

Well, if you had a frame like that, you would cut the bed to show it off??

 

I don't know if it would spark. when you grind aluminum it doesn't spark. plasma cutting aluminum does make the white sparks.

thats pretty much what i was thinking.


i don't think i would drag it. it would destroy it incredibly fast.

 

If you wanna show of the frame you could do a tilt box. There always cool.

 

i had planned on doing a tilt bed on my s-10. but it is definately an option for the yota. maybe i could do a flip frontend, but make it look like its factory.