Ariel Atom titanium chassis in the works
New chassis would result in even-lighter Atom
So news that Ariel is working on an Atom with a titanium chassis – confirmed by Autocar – is hugely exciting. Exciting enough for us to ring Ariel’s Simon Saunders to find out more.
The headline news is a potential 40 per cent weight saving over the regular mild steel Atom chassis – 80kg of the Atom’s all-up weight. That would work out as an overall saving on the kerb weight of around eight per cent, though it’s still very early days as yet and Ariel hasn’t yet built a running prototype.
The bicycle connection isn’t entirely fictional either, Ariel working with renowned supplier of steel and titanium bike frame tubing Reynolds on the pipework for its prototype chassis. Established weight-saving techniques such as butting – thinning the tube walls along the tube but leaving it thicker at the end to support the weld – could be carried over too, saving as much as 1.5kg from the side struts on the Ariel chassis alone.
As Saunders says, it’s a slippery slope and once you start playing with the technology and the weight savings on offer it gets addictive.
It’s not all that straightforward though. Keen cyclists will be aware that although titanium is lighter than steel it’s also more flexible, a characteristic desirable in some applications in bike frames because it allows a degree of shock absorption on frames without any suspension. Great for dealing with ‘road buzz’ but perhaps not so desirable in a car chassis. Ariel has increased the diameter of some of the major tubes in the titanium chassis to answer this but there’s a host of tuning and experimentation to be done, on top of the 200 or so iterations of chassis design they’ve already been through to get this far.
Titanium is also very difficult to work with, requiring an entirely inert workspace purged of oxygen. The chamber in which Ariel has been welding its chassis has been specially built and is the biggest of its kind in the world – just purging all the oxygen out of it takes two days.
That quality of natural springiness and damping will present Ariel with interesting challenges and opportunities when it comes to tuning the feel of the car too. Saunders says they’ll be looking at spring rates and damping accordingly but it’s a fascinating project and one with huge potential for an even lighter, more exciting Atom. One that’ll probably cost quite a bit more too. But what the hell!
[Sources: Autocar]
I'm not sold.
It's not meant to make money by an up-sell of Atom units, but be a technological show piece advertising their unique ability to work with titanium.
What we need is a decent Chinese knock off the Atom for about 15 grand, after all it is only really a climbing frame with an engine.
http://www.therollcagepeople.com/
Apparently the chamber cost about £30,000
You can see in one of the pics that one end has an airlock so that they can take bits in and out.
The jigs that Caged make are amazing in themselves, all Laser cut and CNC folded:
That means on a chassis of the Atom's size, accuracy is to within 1mm. Very impressive.
They also make the chassis for the BAC Mono
I'm not sold.
Pretty sure it'll be worth it!
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