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Thickness of metal

Hi to all

I know this is a bit of a daft question but

Can anyone tell me how thick car body metal is, should be or needs to be and what type of steel it should be?

Having collected cutting, bending and welding tools I contacted a local steel stockist to be bombarded with loads of questions about hot rolled, cold rolled, carbon steel, mild steel, alloy steel etc etc.

Didn't have a clue so when they started on about how thick it needed to be I have up.

I tend to be a bit cautious with things like this so if left to me I would be restoring with 1/4 inch thick plate and will end up with a 3 ton car doing 40mph tops @ 10 gallons to the mile.

Hopefully someone will be able to advise

Thanks

Andrew

Reply to
Andrew Hall
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At least it should be bullet proof! :O)

Reply to
Nick Mason

Ordinary mild steel. For door skins, wings etc usually somewhere in the range between 18 gauge (0.048") thick and 22 gauge (0.030") thick for most cars. 1mm is a good average and should be perfect for just about any body repair. Load bearing chassis members can be much thicker of course. Find a local sheet metal fabrication shop and ask if you can rake about in their scrap bin for offcuts. The scrap value is sod all these days (maybe 2p a kilo) so they'll probably be perfectly happy to let you take whatever you need.

-- Dave Baker

Reply to
Dave Baker

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