Ding resistant car?

Long time ago saturn cars were equipped with plastic doors that are ding resistant. That sounds like a good idea. Why didn't plastic door become the norm?

Even though I'm very careful parking my car, I still get door dings.

Reply to
bob
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The panels were ding resistant BUT the paint wasn't!

Plus they were more expensive to produce, as well as most being heavier than the steel panel they replaced.

Reply to
Steve W.

I think all the vertical panels were plastic which could be replaced. My guess is that cars no longer use this type of construction because it's heavier than a conventional build or doesn't lend itself to mass production. The Pontiac Fiero my have been the first mass produced car to be built this way.

Reply to
dsi1

dsi1 wrote in news:4d696027$0$17960$a8266bb1 @postbox2.readnews.com:

It was.

I well remember the hullaballo that surrounded the nifty and futuristic build-method used to create the Fiero. It was the latest in technology, and one day all cars would be made that way. Fiero chief-engineer Hulki Aldikacti (how do I remember this?) was touted as a hero for his achievements.

There were two problems with the new method:

1) It was heavy. Since the plastic had no structural strength of its own, an underlying steel structure was still needed, so the final assembly was heavier than an ordinary steel door would have been. 2) It was expensive, on account of the duplication implied in point #1.
Reply to
Tegger

This method had a bit of a safety advantage, since there was quite a bit of steel used in the construction, compared with some smaller cars on the market.

The Fiero had some possibilities.. We owned one of the first ones. It had all the teething problems that new cars normally have, and GM, as usual, dodged the most of them.

Reply to
hls

Paint? What paint?

The panels were moulded in color. The plastic pellets used to make the panels were available in the colors specified by GM. If there was any 'paint' on a Saturn door, it was because the door was severely damaged and had to be repaired, then painted.

I worked for GE in Selkirk NY and we provided the pellets used to make the plastic panels.

Reply to
Hachiroku $B%O%A%m%/(B

That was a cool car. It actually had kind of a decent engine, the (2.8?) from the Citation, which was also a car with a lot of potential and about the ONLY American car I ever considered buying new (The X11, of course!). A Toyota won out in the end,and turned out to be one of the best cars I ever owned, but the Fiero and the MR2 were certainly a unique set of automobiles.

Reply to
Hachiroku $B%O%A%m%/(B

You must be a human Xerox machine to remember that one. :-)

As I recall, GM's solution to getting the panels to align right was to place mounting pads on the frame and then drill out the all panel mounting holes with a single machine at the same time. In theory, the frame assemblies could be off some but the mounting holes would be precisely located relative to each other. Did this work? Beats me but that was a pretty radical idea.

Reply to
dsi1

dsi1 wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@d12g2000prj.googlegroups.com:

Yup. That was the Secret Sauce: the Gilman mill-and-drill machine.

There were epoxy-filled pads on the body. These pads were milled to the correct depth, then drilled for mounting fasteners.

Apparently it worked quite well. Just expensive and heavy.

Reply to
Tegger

Hachiroku $B%O%A%m%/(B wrote in news:NDjap.25538$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe01.iad:

It was cool enough that one was driven by Jennifer Grey's character in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". The principal drove a K-car. I think the producers were sending a message there...

Mechanically, the Fiero was basically the front-ends from a Citation and a Chevette joined back-to-back. The MR2 was basically the front-ends from a RWD Corolla and a FWD Corolla joined back-to-back.

Reply to
Tegger

Henry Ford built a ding resistant car body, I think that was back in the

1940's.Soybean based car body.He hit it real hard with a baseball bat.No dings or dents.I think the color was mixed into the body material. cuhulin
Reply to
cuhulin

Actually the engine was a piece of junk. This is one of the ones we talked about in the past that was apparently cast by John Deere, perhaps in Africa... Essentially ALL of them of this production line cracked above the lifter gallery into the water jacket.

Reply to
hls

(APC) Armored Personnel Carrier.I want one of those, I couldn't afford to drive it though. cuhulin

Reply to
cuhulin

My son's biological father has a Ferret, and has pretty much reconditioned it. First time he drove it down Long Beach Boulevard, naturally, the cops pulled him over.. It was perfectly street legal, but they were curious.

Reply to
hls

Here is a link to a Ferret, if you have never seen one. The one they have in California has a fake 50 caliber machine gun fitted in place of the original armament.

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Reply to
hls

Yep, I love those old Military vehicles.

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Crank up the Volume. cuhulin

Reply to
cuhulin

If memory swerves, the Fiero had body panels (made from any of four different kinds of plastic depending on position on the car) and the natural color of at least some of them as a sort of mustard yellow. These were primed and painted in the desired color. The scheme was tolerant of life's minor insults, but a gouge or a hard door-ding would reveal the different native color of the material.

Saturn plastic body panels may have had an intrinsic color that was close to the finish color, but then were painted -- primer, waterborne color coat, urethane clearcoat. I think they also had some metal here and there. Of course, the plastic was a non-stressed part; underneath was a metal space-frame. (I almost bought a Saturn when they first came out, after they cut one in half and put it on a pedestal in the airport concourse hereabouts. Very impressive looking way of countering one's reservations about the crash safety of a small car!)

The Smart (at least Euro versions) takes an interesting approach, with body panels that are easily replaceable, at least by a dealer or advanced do-it-yourselfer. I seem to recall that they called this "le fresh-up" and the intended market was boredom more than repair. Don't recall whether the color was painted on or intrinsic to the plastic, though some of them were in patterns rather than a solid color, which makes me think at least some paint was involved. Supposedly they thought about this at Saturn but didn't make much use of the capability.

They all have to use specially formulated paints that adhere well to plastic and are more flexible.

--Joe

Reply to
Ad absurdum per aspera

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