Built Ford Tough

[jejeosborne]

Something must be different with the sheet metal too. Highest marks for safety. Especially the strength of the cab.
http://www.iihs.org/ratings/summary.aspx?class=70

http://www.iihs.org/ratings/roof/detailsbyclass.aspx?70

Toyota is the only other player close. Unfortunately Toyota has the weakest frame of the group.

So I guess Fords frame and sheet metal wins this discussion.

 

[94BULLITT]

Something must be different with the sheet metal too. Highest marks for safety. Especially the strength of the cab.
IIHS-HLDI

Roof strength evaluations: Large pickups

Toyota is the only other player close. Unfortunately Toyota has the weakest frame of the group.

So I guess Fords frame and sheet metal wins this discussion.

These new Fords have a heck of a frame under them. It is all hydro formed steel, fully boxed.

 

[Peacock]

Best sales tool I ever saw at a dealer was an actual cross section of a Ford, Chevy, Dodge frame. It was a no brainer once you saw the amount of steel in their solid boxed steel frame compared to the sheet steel formed to look like a frame in the other two.

Ford uses more steel in their frames for sure. They need to. They use a much lower tensile strength than GM or Ram do. This is one of the reasons that they tend to be heavier.

2008-2010 F-450/F-550: Frame uses 36,000psi steel

2008-2010 Ram 4500/5500: Frame uses 50,000 psi steel.

2011 2500hd/3500hd: Frame uses 60,000psi steel.

I don't have the specs off hand for the lesser trucks.

 

[mikehaugen]

I agree with the others about not being impressed. I am not much of a Ford fan, but that is beside the point... I wouldn't be impressed had it been a Chevy or Dodge either. Kind of like the motor trend that named the Ram the truck of the year a few months ago. The criteria and vehicles it compared was to me terrible for a magazine with such a good reputation. However it did give me more ammo to throw at a couple of my Ford-loving friends.

Anyway, back to the point. A few of my friends and I had an old s-10 when we were younger. It was a friends that sold it to another friend, and any of us would drive it anytime... almost like a "community" truck. At some point we decided to try to destroy it (not as intense as the punishment to the previously mentioned toyota), so we took it into the woods and smashed it into trees (doing our best to avoid the radiator) and ripped off the doors with another truck and a strap. The truck looked like ****, but we drove it through town to an abandoned rock quarry the next morning for round 2. Two of the guys were driving down a hill quite quickly and managed to hit an offset hill with one tire and flipped the truck in air onto the roof. A bunch of guys rolled it back over and it had 2 flat tires. We found some old tires laying around in the "junk" and took them to my friends house to mount them. When we got back in about an hour, some random person hanging out there had ripped apart the steering column to try to start it somehow, so we now couldn't start it. We managed to pull-start it and still spent the day giving it more punishment. In the end it probably looked about as bad or worse than the truck in the video, except it started out as a 15 year old truck with about 200k on it.

Just about any truck will take a great deal of punishment and still be able to drive under it's own power. Looks on the other hand...

Now what would have been impressive is if it had the dealership fall on it and it didn't have any dents or scratches.

 

[sld]

When Motortrend gave the Honda Ridgeline truck of the year they lost me for good.

 

[schmism]

source?

kinda reminds me of womens magazines that toss out numbers because it makes it more believable. I can see the cover headline now "37% of truck owners report 50K psi frames"

Ford uses more steel in their frames for sure. They need to. They use a much lower tensile strength than GM or Ram do. This is one of the reasons that they tend to be heavier.

2008-2010 F-450/F-550: Frame uses 36,000psi steel

2008-2010 Ram 4500/5500: Frame uses 50,000 psi steel.

2011 2500hd/3500hd: Frame uses 60,000psi steel.

I don't have the specs off hand for the lesser trucks.

 

[Peacock]

This thread has some specs on the frames.

http://www.gminsidenews.com/forums/f22/gm-return-medium-duty-91998/index3.html