Chassis Glue
 

So I was considering putting the car on a rotisory and seam welding. But the car does see some street use, and seam welding doubles to tripples the harmonics of the chassis making the car really loud. The Elise and the F40 are held togather with chassis glue. It does the same job as seam welding with out the added noise. There are a lot of shopsin Japan doing this to street cars. Now my question is where can I get some. I've been looking everywhere, and I cannot find it anywhere. I'm to the point now of using some jb weld or maybe liquid nails. Does anyone know of a source for chassis glue or any alternitives. JB and LN both seem to flexable after setting to be worth any benifit besides sound dampining.
What are your thoughts...

sticky
 

ask some dealers I’ve seen it on many different makes. I’m sure any dealer or assembly plant or good body shop would let you know what they use. Some cars only use spots of it in cracks to save on cost just make sure they sell something to get it off your hands.

Bondo! LOL! That's why I wear gloves...

There is a two part chassis glue that is availeable through professional auto paint stores.

Off to wesco I go, I go! And if it works I'll let you know, you know!

If that does not work, try calling Bonding Materials at 615-726-0361.

Bondage
 

When I put my flares on I was looking for bonding materials instead of using fiberglass sheets. The auto body supply store influenced me to use a bonding glue that they claimed the factories use to bond panels together. It is a black glue that is as easy to use as toothpaste, but bonds like welding. I was really skeptical of the strength of a glue to hold up to cones smacking the flares at 60+mph.
Needless to say that it worked great, very easy to apply and bonds like a weld. I thought about using it to seam "weld" the tub, but I thought I would do the real deal at at later time. This stuff would probably work to no create as much vibration or noise, but it does set up so firm that it may be close to metal welds.

There are different brands out there, but I think that I used 3M. Check your local supply store, they should have a brand similar if not 3M.

Hope it helps.

I know with one brand you can chose the bonding time. Any where from 60 seconds to 30 minutes.

Look for "DuraMix".


-Ted

the glue they use on the f40/exige is bonding carbon fiber together

and please don't use liquid nail =D

I have stitch welded cars before. DC integra, ae86 corolla, 240z, and a couple of others. It doesnt make it noticeably louder. What makes it noticeably louder is that you kind of have to remove a lot of sound deadening material to do it properly. That makes it louder. Also they use a body sealer from the factory on certain parts of the chassis. You will have to remove it from some spots to stich weld it. I simply recomend reapplying it after you are done welding it should you choose to.

the lotus is alluminum and the F40 is CF...

Have any links? I am trying to wrap my head around this.

I see the benefit of using it to assemble or manufacture a shell. I do not see how it will benefit a already welded shell. Are they using like a seam sealer, like you are caulking windows? Seems to me each panel would need to be separated from each other and the entire overlapping joint bonded to see a benefit.

Curious though.

-billy

Nolinks sorry. You know what stitch welding looks like and seam welding. But most people are sticth welding instead of seam cause of all the heat seam weling tends to warp the chassis. So instead of seamwelding you're using chassis glue to "seam weld" the car. If you take off all your interior pannels you'll see how shitty the car is put togather. you can flex the body by hand. A stiffer chassis gives you more feel. There is too stiff though...

I understand stitch welding and chassis stiffening. My question is how are you planning to use it? Between two overlapping panels or on the seam of two panels like caulking a window seam?

-billy

Both. I'm going to goop the car up!

I almost hate to jump to jump into this.

"I want to stiffen the chassis but don't want to increase noise, so should I use chassis glue or not?"

The "right" answer depends on many more considerations:

- What are you hoping to accomplish with the car? What is your intended "end state"? Why do you want to stiffen the chassis? Maybe stiffening the chassis makes the car handle worse....
- As noted elsewhere, the Elise was engineered with an aluminum chassis and is not a unibody car as is ours. Looking at what Lotus did vs. what you might want to do is like comparing apples and oranges.
- "Gooping up the car" is a bad idea. The equivalent of "let's throw shit on the wall and see what sticks".


By the way, what year car do you have, what engine, and what are your plans for the car?

Sorry; I just get tired of threads that ask "should I do this?" when I don't know what they want to accomplish in the end.

Believe me, I have been there, done that. I learned the lessons the hard way. Just don't want to see others do it.

The goal is to have the chassis as stiff as if I had a full cage w/o the melon cracking risk of it. It's a 83 rx with a s5 streetported 13bt with 208k on the chassis it needs all the help it needs. And I'm not copying louts read the thread. By using chassis glue to stitch weld the chassis you get near the same results as plane old stitch welding without the noise factor. This will be an autoX car that sees weekend street use. I don't understand how people aren't grasping the concept. Ever seen a stitch welded racecar? Well instead of welds it'll be chassis glue... Stiffens w/o the added noise...

Though I have certainly not seen everything, all the stitch welded chassis I have seen were done in conjunction with other efforts to add rigidity to the car and not unto itself. For example, welding AND adding a cage with bars that extend from the front hoop to the strut towers, and / or triangulating bars in various areas.

The other thing is that a cage is done first to provide driver safety, and then secondly to provide chassis reinforcement and stiffening. Given the attachment points of cages, and where you are planning on adding chassis glue, I am not sure it will provide the same effect. This kind of gets into areas of vehicle dynamics and physics that are certainly way beyond my level of expertise.

Not knowing the condition of your car and setup on your car in terms of spring rates, shocks, tire width and compound, I am assuming it is relatively rust free and undamanged. If so, in my opinio a car that will be street driven and autocrossed should not need general stiffening. It may need reinforcement in some areas (I am thinking the rear upper and lower link mounts and a couple other places), but shouldn't need general stiffening.

Now if the car has rust issues or previous crash damage, that's another issue that should be addressed first.

I guess I just haven't seen issues that require general chassis stiffening in street / autocross cars. Both my old IT car (with a cage) and my current street car / autocrosser have fairly stiff suspensions and were driven hard with no detectable ill effects from a chassis flex perspective. My autocross / street car has 165k miles on it, and even with significant autocrossing there have been no detectable problems with chassis flex (I put pieces of tape over various seams to detect movement of body panels due to flex).

On the other hand, I don't think it would hurt anything. except perhaps the amount of weight being added to the car.

That's the idea. It's worth $25 to try, and the extra pound I'll just shit before I race from now on and I'll lose 7 lbs that way. LOL!