I've read this somewhere else regarding a tie rod with an inner core of aluminum that's supposed to do this IIRC. Unless there's someone on here that can explain how on earth a metal can bend back by itself once its stressed I'm calling bullshit on that one. EVERY time I've bent a piece of metal it's stayed bent.
This conversation reminds me of my motocross days. When I bought my 1990 YZ 250, back in the day, it came with steel handle bars which got badly bent the first time I dumped it. Shortly thereafter I bought after market aluminum bars and never bent them. The point is that any material will bend and stay deformed if taken past the yield point.
Some aluminum has 1/2 the strength of some steels and approximately 1/3the weight. Using that as a guild shows that aluminum that is 3 times thicker, but the same weight as steel, should have an increased yield by 50% in theory, if the application allows.
In the case of my handle bars, the steel ones had a tube thickness of around 1/16" or so. The aluminum bars were around 3/16" thick and about the same weight, but were probably around 50% stronger.
A disadvantage of aluminum is that once the material is pushed past yield, it loses a lot more strength when brought back. Steel is more forgiving in this respect.
As far as the aluminum core tie rod; sounds like bs to me, but I would be interested in seeing some testing on it compared to others.
I was just pulling the quote :clap2:
