Aluminum inner panels

[daryle]

Just wondering if the use of aluminum inners were allowed on the 6 outer panels back in the day? Talking from memory XB onwards.

[Interceptor]

aluminium inners?

[daryle]

We were required to run some aluminum inner panels for Ford racing back in the day. The inners were for the 4 doors, engine hood and luggage. We ran these on night shift because they created less disruption. Was wondering if using these panels on a racing car was illegal?
Certain other parts were also a "special" run for Ford racing only.

[Interceptor]

Ahh, makes a lot more sense now.

What class of racing are you competing in?

[daryle]

To be more specific i am pretty sure we also made aluminum door inners for the coupe range of falcons as well. Type of racing was Aus touring cars back in the early 80's.
Conrods were typically called "Moffat" rods and were a real pain on tooling because of the high nickel content. Normal 351 rods hit with a hammer would go clunk, Moffat rods hit with a hammer would go ping. Supposedly good for another 500 revs at least, polished and shot peened good for another 1000 rpm with upgraded rod bolts. If any of this info may be detrimental in any way i ask the mods to delete it.
We ran the panels on night shift because any aluminum scrap could not be allowed to go onto any scrap conveyor so all scrap chutes etc had to be closed and aluminum scrap manually collected.

[Citroënbender]

How did the dies go with aluminium “smearing” onto them in deeper draws? Also what about metal gauge - surely there was adjustment to allow a thicker sheet? Was it a chore to decontaminate for the steel runs afterwards?

[daryle]

The inner panels were not very deep draws but we still had lots of problems regarding panel splits. Because they were inner panels some minor splits were accepted. Thickness was about the same as the steel inners at around 0.7mm.
Draw dies were steam cleaned after runs but this was the case when steel was run.