Round or Square

[Shawn]

With all the knowledge on this site it is going to be much easier than I had orginally anticipated. I appreciate the information that has been posted by all of you. I think I will use ERW, I can attain many large scrap peices of this at my job for free. I will not be racing my GT-40 so hopefully the chassis I end up with will hold together for quite some time. Once again thanks everyone for the help, i'm sure I will have plenty of other questions along the way. :thumbsup:

Hey Russ do you make body parts for other people?

 

[Russ Noble]

Hey Russ do you make body parts for other people?

I have helped out some locals here in NZ, but I don't think that freight costs to ship half way round the world would make it viable.....if that's what you're getting at......But then again the NZ dollar is currently very favourable so who knows......

It's a bit hypothetical anyway, coz I won't have the time to do anything more in that line until my car is sorted! And to make life easy for myself, in future I won't enter into any agreement to sell anything unless I have the parts already made and sitting on the shelf ready to ship. And that's not likely for a few months....

 

[Chris Duncan]

Specifically as related to a GT40 chassis you want square for most of the chassis to facilitate panel attachment and round for the roll cage for strength.

when you compare square and round a 1.5" square will be stronger than a 1.5" round because of more material in cross section. But round is stronger from all directions. So you build the cage out of 1-5/8" x .125 wall, this is up to most racing codes.

typically you can go with 1.5" x .085" wall for the main runners but this may be a little on the light side.

 

[Shawn]

I think I will weld thin sheet metal to the round tubing. I have already collected a bunch of round tubing for the chassis. I will gusset most of the connections with lightweight aircraft style gussets. I think my chassis will be a little heavier than most but im OK with that. I just do not want to deal with frame problems later on. I would rather be tuning suspension and engine components than worrying if my chassis will hold together. I have tons of information to juggle:juggle2: I am getting closer to striking that first arch though.