What guage steel?, Floorpans, trunk pan, etc. Options

[Wanna9146]

What is the thickest guage steel used on our cars? I'm about to purchase a "nibbler" to do some cutting and they come in three flavors: 14ga., 16ga. & 18ga. I could just go ahead and purchase the largest (14ga.), but the price goes way up with each tool. So...gotta buy only what I need.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/confused24.gif)

[bperry]

"gauge" is such a horrible system of measurement. It is based on weight rather
than thickness. So the thickness of a given "gauge" is different depending
on the metal. ie 16 gauge steel vs stainless steel galvanized steel,
vs aluminum are all different thicknesses.
(I believe this goes back to how it was taxed years ago)

To make matters even more complicated, the Imperial system of measurement
is so painfully crude, there is alot of of folks tend to round and say
"about" this size.
(Metric is much better - but the US hasn't decided it important enough to mandate it)

Making it even more complicated, some panels actually do come in metric
thicknesses, but because the US market is so used to "gauge" they back
convert it from mm to gauge and sometimes screwup the conversion
or have to round to get one of those "about" gauge sizes.
Some metal will actually come marked with both metric thicknesses
and gauge.

The best bet is to get out your calipers and actually measure it.
Since our cars were made in Germany, (one of the evil metric system users),
the metal is based on metric thicknesses. Much of what is in the car is actually
1 mm. This doesn't map directly to a US "gauge".

It works about to be "about" 19 gauge (steel of course) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
which isn't one of those normal US sizes. 18 gauge is probably
the closest without getting something thinner.

Here are some other posts related to this:

Metal question ?, What gauge metal ?

Steel Gauge thickness of panels


--- bill