Toyota Tundra to get Cummins 5.0L V8 Diesel too

[fordmantpw]

True that. The thing with aluminum is the cost swings wildly based on economic cycles - the cost is actually pretty low now. Just wait until it booms again (relative to steel).

Ford has their price locked in for a certain period of time (years), and now GM has a contract for their trucks starting in 2018. Alcoa is actually bringing more factories on line to meet demand, so I look for Al prices to stabilize a bit more because of it.

Take care of your trucks, fellas - won't be able to afford a new one again!

Ain't that the truth!

 

[jejeosborne]

Alcoa is actually bringing more factories on line to meet demand, so I look for Al prices to stabilize a bit more because of it.

I have only heard of shutdowns recently. Where did you see this? I live near an alcoa facility as well as a couple others. They are all struggling or closing. Hope your source is correct.

 

[fordmantpw]

I have only heard of shutdowns recently. Where did you see this? I live near an alcoa facility as well as a couple others. They are all struggling or closing. Hope your source is correct.

I can't remember where I read it and can't find it now for some reason. There was mention of two new factories (maybe they were bringing closed factories back on line??) in the US and one overseas.

 

[crazyal]

I wouldn't count on aluminum being cheap any time soon. Ford ran into a problem with Alcoa's alloy they were expecting to use. It turns out that when you stamp metal into shape it slightly returns to being flat. The solution is to slightly over stamp the shape. With steel this is easy as it's very predictable. With the alloy Ford expected to use it wasn't pure enough and the stampings were varying too much. Alcoa now has to purify it's alloy further than they expected, that's going to cost.

 

[DeereMann]

Thanks for sharing, crazyal. Had not heard about this. I certainly don't know much about stamping aluminum except that it is 3x 'springier' than steel alloys. So there is substantially more springback from stamping, but didn't know it was less predictable too.

Well, the Ford CEO is former Boeing Engineer, so he must know how to get an aluminum alloy stamped, as that is all they used to use on commercial aircraft. (Now they use some carbon fiber epoxy composite sections also).

This is certainly interesting, at least. Too bad it's all because of government regulation.