What he actually said, when pressed on this was [something like] "it would have been too expensive to engineer the chassis in stainless to be able to take impacts even when brittle" Reading between the lines, it would make sense they would have had to crash a load of stainless frames, at sub -4 degrees to see where they'd break. I guess today's computerised stress-analysis would eliminate this problem. Martin Donald Ekhoff wrote: > Mike was referring to "Hot dip galvanizing" and this is a molten metal > process. It is like soldering closed all your threaded holes only zinc is > much harder than solder. It is possible to plug during the hot dip process > with hard carbon plugs but it is problematic and time consuming. > > Also Mike indicated that the reason for not using Stainless was not cost but > the poor low temperature (-5 degrees C.) crush characteristics of Stainless > in a litigious American market. He indicated that in testing it tended to > fracture which undid the crush zone design. > > Donald L. Ekhoff