2015 f150

[JOES66FURY]

airplanes have lots of aluminum. lots of vibration up there in the sky and landings cause lots of shake...they hold up pretty well until they hit the ground at 300mph....

[SuperBuickGuy]

My guess is that much of the body will b glued together as it's usually faster and cheaper to bond aluminum than weld it. So repairs will likely be done by bonding as well - no big deal. Fillers have to be matched to the aluminum as the expansion rates of the current fillers (Bondo, etc.) will be incorrect.

On the corrosion front, we'll hope Ford is plating or otherwise protecting the structure - this ain't their first rodeo. And the Americans have learned that their rep takes a HUGE hit when they build water-soluable vehicles (remember the Vega?). Pretty sure they will learn from past mistakes.

That said, I wouldn't buy a first-year vehicle as a matter of policy. It takes a while for everything to get shaken down in real world usage.

Dan

dang it Dan, you're all for hugging the trees, but you don't want recyclable cars.... sheesh, you're so hard to please

[NewEnglandRaceFan]

airplanes have lots of aluminum. lots of vibration up there in the sky and landings cause lots of shake...they hold up pretty well until they hit the ground at 300mph....

rivits allow some movement I'd think..

[JOES66FURY]

rivits allow some movement I'd think..

hmmm, not so much....movement causes cracks, cracks cause bad things to happen if not identified...

[SpiderGearsMan]

It stinks there is no diesel option

[SpiderGearsMan]

bullcrap.. there is no good reason that light duty trucks are as huge as they have become..

Ford was driven from that market

[Cyclone03]

hmmm, not so much....movement causes cracks, cracks cause bad things to happen if not identified...

This is true,but dont forget we look at them everytime we (crew) takes them out and bring them in every 200/400/600/1200 hours for inspection. Then "out of the blue" somebody finds a crack and we get an Urgent Action TCTO grounding the fleet.

As for the truck,I dont think it will be an issue. Dont some of the Over the road big rigs have aluminum frames?

[bulletproof]

and here I set thinking about building a 55-57 chevy 3/4 ton 4x4 short bed..

[milner351]

and here I set thinking about building a 55-57 chevy 3/4 ton 4x4 short bed..

cheaper, cooler, and way way way cheaper to insure!

if I lived where stuff wouldn't rust I'd laugh all the way to the bank driving older stuff that was nearly free to insure...

Insurance is legalized extortion.

[BBR]

and here I set thinking about building a 55-57 chevy 3/4 ton 4x4 short bed..

I was marveling at the simplicity of the F250's wiring diagram just the other day. Wish they could go back!

[milner351]

YES!

Seriously - since I work at Ford I hope we sell them faster than we can build them.... but for guys like us that are no afraid to get our hands dirty and challenge our minds with a bit of troubleshooting.... older vehicles are the way to go from a myriad of angles, have I mentioned the cost of insurance? Registration? and really - if it gets 3-5mpg worse - the families bottom line is still ahead of the game with the other savings.

The bottom line is vehicles have been overwhelmed with regulations and complexity driven by consumer demand - there's no way they can build them like they used to - so it's up to us to do it.

[38P]

Ford was driven from that market

No they weren't. The sector shrank dramatically and somebody in "One Ford" decided that the new Ranger that still sells big in the rest of the world overlaps too much with the F-series. Why spend the ridiculous certification money to market something that mostly steals share from yourself?

I predict as CAFE standards really start biting in a few more years, smaller trucks will be back . . . out of necessity.

[Beagle]

well as seen as ford crew cab's are 50k plus.. it maybe a truck but it's still a huge investment.. and not everyone beats them when they work them.. I can see a contractor not caring as it's going to get used daily in a way that kill the body.. but for the people that don't get to write off the trucks use as a business expense.. a 50k-62k truck you want to keep nice.. at least most like to take care of their stuff.. You think the salt bath the rust belt does a number to the steel, what un till it gets a hold of untreated alum.. the truck will turn to dust.. guess you won't see many new fords launching boats.. I can see the what me care,when a truck was a well truck.. today pickups are not trucks.. they are overgrown linc & caddy's wrapped in a pickup body.. it's comical to even try to find a reg cab pickup on a dealers lot anymore..

There's no such thing as untreated aluminum, as soon as your rub off the rust layer, it does it again immediately. It just happens to be a really HARD rust that doesn't turn loose easily.

Yeah, there are a lot of candy ass trucks around here, but there always have been. I have no use for a "pretty" truck, but that's my thing. I tried to keep one nice once, and it got turned into burnt toast so I'm not doing that again. Okay, for the record, even the nice one had a bend in the tailgate where I got a little careless with a huge chunk of concrete from a 4 bag of 'crete basketball pole. I've seen plenty of beat to hell tooboxes in aluminum too, I bet it will be okay.

the 50k trucks floor me, but in relative terms, it's about the same as the 13k truck I bought in 1986... and it's a helluva lot better truck than the one I bought in 86. I'm not buying a new one right now so it really doesn't matter if it's made out of play-dough to me.

Spidey got it right , where's my damn diesel!

[Sleeper 6]

best part will be finding a body shop that can repair it

lots of cars have been using alum panels for a long time. Hell a 88 RX7 has an alum hood. They have held up fine. I had an all alum car in the 70s that did dent easy but things have changed. Hopefully for the better. Body shops should have no problems fixing these new trucks. It's not 1970 anymore ;-)

[Sleeper 6]

the 50k trucks floor me, but in relative terms, it's about the same as the 13k truck I bought in 1986... and it's a helluva lot better truck than the one I bought in 86. I'm not buying a new one right now so it really doesn't matter if it's made out of play-dough to me.

Spidey got it right , where's my damn diesel!

The new $50k trucks are nice to drive an have fun with them. Ya have to remember they hold there value better than a car. Right now I would loose about $5/7k on our 2010 $52k truck with 54,000 miles on it. Plus it rides better than a new Lincoln MKS !! Ours is basically a "commuter" 4 door truck .. goes from Mass to NH a few times a week in comfort. Hell the dog even loves it. We will be looking the new ones over !!