Repair cost for aluminum F-150 body

[mikeyjd]

Originally Posted by Baltothewolf

He makes 50$ an hour, he has too much money even after buying the truck lmfao.

There's no such thing.

[Xist]

How much interest would one pay on a fifty-two thousand-dollar vehicle?

[Xist]

No, but you can have a girl too pretty, or a car too fast...

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Baltothewolf

He makes 50$ an hour, he has too much money even after buying the truck lmfao.

Then why does he have your uncle as a roommate? Does he just like sharing his living space with others?

Originally Posted by Xist

No, but you can have a girl too pretty, or a car too fast...

I ain't never had too much fun.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Ford's managing board is definitely going crazy. With all that stupidity increasing its repair costs I guess the folks who really use it as a truck is supposed to be used are going to get a either a Ram or a Silverado.

[adam728]

I think the aluminum body is very hyped up by marketing, and therefor has received a lot of extra attention and criticism from "experts" all over the media and internet.

Aluminum has been used in car and truck bodies for quite some time. Yes there are some special procedures for welding repairs, but painting isn't a very big deal.

• The F150 already had an aluminum hood with no hype or fanfare, since the 1997 model year.
• Explorers had aluminum hoods and front fenders 13 years ago.
• GM put aluminum hoods on cars quite commonly even in the 90's.
• Big GM suv's have had aluminum lift gates for a number of years
• GM even did aluminum hoods on some G-bodies back into the 70's.
• Not to mention all the Jaguar, Land Rover, etc vehicles that have been coming in aluminum for many many years.
• Aluminum panel vans never get repaired or repainted?

So why all this fear of something "new"? It's not even really new, just a lot of marketing pizzazz involved.

[Fat Charlie]

Ford knows exactly what they're doing.

Insurance and repair costs aren't that big a factor to the new car buyer, especially the idiots buying overpriced POSs that they don't need (full size trucks). Looking at it from supply, manufacturing or marketing perspectives, it's genius even in the short term and it's setting Ford up for longer term success as well.

A quick Googling gets some good info from Car and Driver and Forbes.

Car and Driver:

By pre-sorting the scraps into containers of like materials, the analyst predicts Ford will earn $1.20 per pound... if the company didn’t separate the four grades of aluminum, it would earn only $.80 per pound. The analyst’s report goes on to estimate a return of $80 million per year for the company, more than enough to offset the alleged $60 million price tag put on the recycling equipment.

While Ford declined to comment on these findings, it’s worth noting that CEO Allan Mulally arrived at Ford after a 35-year career at Boeing Aircraft, a company whose business is largely built on the intelligent and efficient use of aluminum. With a CV like that, it should come as no surprise that Ford would be the first to market an aluminum-intensive mass-market vehicle.

Forbes:

Novelis, the world’s largest aluminum recycler, showed Ford how it could afford the switch to higher-priced aluminum... Together they created an innovative supply chain that allows Ford to recover a big chunk of its aluminum costs by selling the scrap back to its suppliers and reusing it.

Here’s how it works: When a vehicle body panel is stamped, about 40% of the metal winds up as scrap. Instead of gathering up all the various metal scraps from its stamping plants in Dearborn, Mich. and Buffalo, N.Y., Ford installed $60 million worth of elaborate pneumatic scrap-handling equipment that will separate the aluminum alloy scraps on conveyors and deposit them in dedicated containers to avoid contamination by other grades of metal.

The loose, shredded scrap is received in bulk dump trucks at the Novelis plant... The pieces are then melted in a 2,000-degree furnace... and it is cast into massive 30,000-pound ingots for subsequent processing. It’s then ready to be rolled into sheets one-sixteenth of an inch thick and shipped in giant coils back to Ford’s stamping plants, where the process begins anew.

They're inventing new efficiency in making the truck, and the truck they're making is 700 pounds lighter than the one without aluminum, with all the cascading efficiency benefits that brings. They're ahead of the entire industry on this- and that's before people buy into it's being a "green" truck.

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

Ford's managing board is definitely going crazy. With all that stupidity increasing its repair costs I guess the folks who really use it as a truck is supposed to be used are going to get a either a Ram or a Silverado.

Ford is leading the way is this segment. Soon the Ram and Silverado will be aluminum as well.

I don't recall this much controversy over other all-aluminum vehicles, ex Audi.

[adam728]

Why are full size trucks POS's?
Why are people buying them idiots?

And we can't look at the fully optioned out sticker and apply it to the entire model line. My wife has been new car shopping, it's fairly easy to take any car and deck it with a huge cost increase. Trucks just seem to get it worse, because you can compare 2wd vs 4wd and regular cab to crew cab, so the differential from base model to stupid-chromed-out-mall-cruiser becomes even larger.

[Fat Charlie]

Why don't you drive a truck? Probably because you 1. Don't need one and 2. Haven't lied to yourself enough to convince yourself that you need one. Most people fall into #1, and most new truck buyers messed up on #2.

A full size truck that is used as a truck is a very useful tool; it's excellent at hauling stuff. It's a horrible people hauler though, and even more so when it's mainly used to haul only one person. People who need to drive one or two people around with maybe a few grocery bags and yet convince themselves that buying a brand new full size truck is the right move, well... Stupid is as stupid does. It keeps the lights on where I work and all, but it's really hard to keep a straight face when I've got a customer who needs a CAI or a chrome tailgate handle.

A $50k Chromemobile is a caricature, yes. We mainly sell ones with body colored trim (and some chrome) in the low 30s (before the remote start, sidesteps, mudflaps, bedliner and tonneau cover). Rarely is an actual work truck on the lot, and a cab & chassis is special order only.