poortecher Posted February 3, 2007 Share Posted February 3, 2007 Quick question. In your opinion, how much will thicker floor pans help with chassis stiffness? I just replaced my floorpans and I used 18 ga sheet for the panels. How much of a real, noticeable gain in stiffness could be gained by using say 16 ga? I'm also going to install a set of pete paraska's subframe connectors. Would it be worth the effort to replace the floors with a thicker metal? Or would the subframe connectors make the effort not worth the gain? Eric Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Careless Posted February 3, 2007 Share Posted February 3, 2007 Quick question. In your opinion, how much will thicker floor pans help with chassis stiffness? I just replaced my floorpans and I used 18 ga sheet for the panels. How much of a real, noticeable gain in stiffness could be gained by using say 16 ga? I'm also going to install a set of pete paraska's subframe connectors. Would it be worth the effort to replace the floors with a thicker metal? Or would the subframe connectors make the effort not worth the gain? Eric I've asked myself this too. i am probably going to go with 16 or 18 guage steel. but i think 16 is a bit of an overkill if you paint it properly and weld it in so it's more of a tensile strengthening piece, rather than a shearing or compression-type rigidity enhancer. as long as it's taught enough so that it wont buckle or bind under heavy g's as well as creak or crack under similar situation, i think going more than 17 or 18 guage is overkill. it really depends though. if it was a 240, which is lighter, i'd probably go with the thicker floors. if it was 280, which is heavier and has strengthening elsewhere (full-to-back floorpan frame), i would polly go with 18 and some thick ass rails. for my project, i'm tying my rails into the my rockers with small ribbed square stock that is relatively thin; prolly 1/4 or 1/2 the guage of the paraska specs. and the rocker will have a tube running through it to attach those to so that it will be a full double-sided ladder frame. i might even extend some of them to the point at whcih the transmission tunnel begins to curve depending on how much metal i can get for a good price Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pop N Wood Posted February 3, 2007 Share Posted February 3, 2007 18 guage is hard enough to work with. 16 guage would be a nightmare. Rather than thicker metal you are much better off rolling some beads into thinner metal. If you are using flat sheet metal for the floor then you can't be too worried about stiffness. Anybody can make something stronger. The trick is to make is stronger without adding excess weight. From what everyone has said, Pete's connectors with stock floor pans are very stiff. Maybe more than is really needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buZy Posted February 6, 2007 Share Posted February 6, 2007 There are many pics in my gallery of aluminum floor pans and subframe connections inside and out. http://album.hybridz.org/showphoto.php?photo=11014&cat=500&ppuser=10889 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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