Wavy door panels

[Spectragod]

Mine could be better or worse, with my wife’s driving style/history, I prefer my cars pre damaged, it’s a little less painless when the inevitable happens..... just sayin.

 

[JohnyPython]

Is there anybody else disgusted on how lumpy and wavy these door panels are, I mean Jesus 70k truck and they can't stamp the panel straight? When I point it out to my dealer they look at me like I'm speaking a foreign language, am I the only one that notices that it's a sack of potatoes?

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It’s pretty hard to stamp/form aluminum body panels. Plus mounting other parts to it. As mentioned, around the door handles is lumpy.

Steel holds a crisper form.

 

[Spectragod]

I’ll keep my janky wavy door panels....




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[nikhsub1]

yep the door panels do suck...

 

[Badgertits]

It’s pretty hard to stamp/form aluminum body panels. Plus mounting other parts to it. As mentioned, around the door handles is lumpy.

Steel holds a crisper form.

I’m in the AL biz- I work for a company that produces secondary AL alloy (like the Raptors running boards or tranny casing), but We also provide scrap feed products for primary AL rolling mills- including all that produce the slab/sheet/coil for the F150s. There are inherent flaws in the production process that make true “closed loop” recycling of the scrap generated from the rolling & stamping process - the 5xxx alloys don’t necessarily play well w/ all the 6xxx alloys & since a lot of the panels are bonded w/ glue or rivets shredding up the material doesn’t fully liberate the 2 alloys & even if it did they can’t be economically segregated & any type of production pace so it requires remelting it all together so to speak & metering that screwy chemistry metal back into their new production heats a bit at a time.

I mention this because originally the plan was to use 7xxx series AL for exterior panels due to the higher tensile strength & rigidity of that alloy family (primary alloying agent being zinc- 7xxx commonly used as armor plating in military for instance & also used heavily in aerospace) BUT they found through trials that the 7xxx alloys didn’t take the thin water based paint very well, when stamped the grain structure of the metal is thinned & straightened out & these “veins” were visible through the paint so that plan was scrapped.

Instead they went w/ primarily brand new 6xxx alloys developed for the auto industry. The paint adheres much better & being slightly softer is easier to form/stamp into more intricate shapes so you theoretically would be able to use single pieces for larger standings vs. adjoining more than 1 in some instances. So there were compromises that had to be made. If they used 7xxx they would be able to truly be almost closed loop as the 7xxx is easily culled out of the 6xxx but hindsight isn’t always 20-20, however the paint adhesion simply wasn’t commercially acceptable.

Which - at any rate regardless of AL alloy chosen for the application- required Ford to outfit their plants w/ a whole new series of presses & molds etc. for the AL panels- the steel presses could not carry over due to numerous variables that differs between the 2 materials. Ford had been designing/refining/tinkering steel stamping presses & manufacturing process for decades- stamping AL- certainly in any kind of volume- was entirely new to them. My guess is it may be the Indian & not the arrow w/ the inconsistency of the AL body panels sleekness- the “Indian” being the newly minted presses @ fords factories.

Other companies that had been making aluminum bodied vehicles prior to ford jumping into it from a mass market standpoint were only making a fraction of the vehicles & could hold the quality standards that much higher & also had a lot more experience/researching utilizing AL in their manufacturing processes. Why I mention Aston Martin etc.

Side note- based on the time of production for my truck & where it was made there’s a very good chance some of my own metal made its way into it

 

[Raptor Vet]

yep the door panels do suck...

They kinda do...but the rest of the truck is awesome

 

[JohnyPython]

I’m in the AL biz- I work for a company that produces secondary AL alloy (like the Raptors running boards or tranny casing), but We also provide scrap feed products for primary AL rolling mills- including all that produce the slab/sheet/coil for the F150s. There are inherent flaws in the production process that make true “closed loop” recycling of the scrap generated from the rolling & stamping process - the 5xxx alloys don’t necessarily play well w/ all the 6xxx alloys & since a lot of the panels are bonded w/ glue or rivets shredding up the material doesn’t fully liberate the 2 alloys & even if it did they can’t be economically segregated & any type of production pace so it requires remelting it all together so to speak & metering that screwy chemistry metal back into their new production heats a bit at a time.

I mention this because originally the plan was to use 7xxx series AL for exterior panels due to the higher tensile strength & rigidity of that alloy family (primary alloying agent being zinc- 7xxx commonly used as armor plating in military for instance & also used heavily in aerospace) BUT they found through trials that the 7xxx alloys didn’t take the thin water based paint very well, when stamped the grain structure of the metal is thinned & straightened out & these “veins” were visible through the paint so that plan was scrapped.

Instead they went w/ primarily brand new 6xxx alloys developed for the auto industry. The paint adheres much better & being slightly softer is easier to form/stamp into more intricate shapes so you theoretically would be able to use single pieces for larger standings vs. adjoining more than 1 in some instances. So there were compromises that had to be made. If they used 7xxx they would be able to truly be almost closed loop as the 7xxx is easily culled out of the 6xxx but hindsight isn’t always 20-20, however the paint adhesion simply wasn’t commercially acceptable.

Which - at any rate regardless of AL alloy chosen for the application- required Ford to outfit their plants w/ a whole new series of presses & molds etc. for the AL panels- the steel presses could not carry over due to numerous variables that differs between the 2 materials. Ford had been designing/refining/tinkering steel stamping presses & manufacturing process for decades- stamping AL- certainly in any kind of volume- was entirely new to them. My guess is it may be the Indian & not the arrow w/ the inconsistency of the AL body panels sleekness- the “Indian” being the newly minted presses @ fords factories.

Other companies that had been making aluminum bodied vehicles prior to ford jumping into it from a mass market standpoint were only making a fraction of the vehicles & could hold the quality standards that much higher & also had a lot more experience/researching utilizing AL in their manufacturing processes. Why I mention Aston Martin etc.

Side note- based on the time of production for my truck & where it was made there’s a very good chance some of my own metal made its way into it

Thanks for your insight.

 

[borzraptor]

I have a lot of issues with the build quality of these trucks for $70k. So what it’s based on a $25k truck? Are you really suggesting that I expect the build quality to be that of a truck that’s about 1/3 of the value?

 

[MnFlyer]

Well to be fair, the Raptor is a 53k truck. All the tech add ons (802a, glass roof, etc) bring it up to 70ish k

That stuff really has nothing to do with build quality.


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[jaz13]

I have a lot of issues with the build quality of these trucks for $70k. So what it’s based on a $25k truck? Are you really suggesting that I expect the build quality to be that of a truck that’s about 1/3 of the value?

Doesn't like Ford quality. Spends $70k on Ford. Then complains about Ford quality.

You got no one to blame but yourself.