Help settle this Cold verses hrew question

angryfab · Jul 2, 2014

99% of the time when I build a hrew chassis I use thicker material . On the 1.5 chassis I use .130 wall an on the 1.75 I use .152 wall . On my dom buggys I don't build 1.5 chassis because it don't cost but .20 cents less then 1.75 . On the 1.75 chassis I use .120 on all interior an .188 on all impact zones . Pissing match or not I would rather build out of dom but I would say 75% of the people I talk to picks the hrew over the dom just for the price . An 99% that build out of dom are just worried about resale.
Their is a video on youtube that showes the process it cool . An from talking to my suppliers they tell me the 1020 is all I can get in the .120 wall an the .188 an up is 1026 some thing to do with the thickness .
Justkeep in mind that the more u buy the cheaper it gets . Hrew I buy over 100 sticks at a time an dom I try to get 30 or more an I buy from marmon keystone/ .an places like that not little corner shops .an I go get it .

blacksheep10 · Jul 2, 2014

I'm getting 1.75x .120 1020 DOM delivered to my shop if I buy 10 sticks or more for less than $3/ft. Cheaper yet if I want more. I'm trying to get out of tube work for the most part so my needs have gone down and prices up.

85toyo · Jul 2, 2014

I've built everything on my current rig with HREW because that's what all of the existing tube was. The last time I was at Besco in Birmingham, the salesman quoted me $95 per 20' stick of 1.75x.120 for 10 sticks. I get HREW for $40-44 a stick most times from there. Double the price just doesn't sound right to me.

Elliott · Jul 2, 2014

That's a little high but not far off if you don't buy much.

Nuts · Jul 2, 2014

My guess is HREW vs DOM is like drinking and driving. A lot more people do it than will admit to it.

TacomaJD · Jul 2, 2014

AdamF said:
My guess is HREW vs DOM is like drinking and driving. A lot more people do it than will admit to it.

Lol how is even relative? :drinkers:

&

is fun.

bad80cj · Jul 2, 2014

AdamF said:
My guess is HREW vs DOM is like drinking and driving. A lot more people do it than will admit to it.

that was funny as all hell!

Nuts · Jul 2, 2014

TacomaJD said:
Lol how is even relative? & is fun.

kushKrawlin · Jul 2, 2014

AdamF said:
My guess is HREW vs DOM is like drinking and driving. A lot more people do it than will admit to it.

Hahaha! That was good. And prob spot on!

pholmann · Jul 2, 2014

85toyo said:
I've built everything on my current rig with HREW because that's what all of the existing tube was. The last time I was at Besco in Birmingham, the salesman quoted me $95 per 20' stick of 1.75x.120 for 10 sticks. I get HREW for $40-44 a stick most times from there. Double the price just doesn't sound right to me.

I'm getting it about 35$ a 20ft stick here in knoxville at SSS steel

pachary · Jul 2, 2014

Re: Help settle this Cold verses hrew question

What I'm saying, is if the price difference for the tubing (with all the other costs and time being the same for both) then maybe it is the wrong hobby. If the margin is that tight...........ll. It is cheaper to use materials that will hold up longer in the first place. When you spend the time and money fabbing stuff up, it really sucks to have to spend more time and money to redo/replace damaged sections, especially if you are bracing and tying the tube into multiple points.

Kind of along the lines of bitching about twenty five dollar park entry fees.........and going back to the original post, if the cold rolled is " quite a bit more expensive" it has to be close to the cost of DOM.

And I really don't think "most" chassis are being made from either type h/c-rew.

But, to answer your original question, it is mostly an issue of availability.

knaffie · Jul 3, 2014

Re: Re: Help settle this Cold verses hrew question

Steel all weighs the same. Mild steel, tool steel, hot rolled, cold rolled, HREW, DOM, chrome-moly, chromo, 1020, 4140, .......... Steel is all the same weight.

Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk

bgredjeep · Jul 3, 2014

I don't get how cost can be such a big factor on this in the grand scheme of building a rig. I've got 200' of DOM I bought for some work I'm planning for my Jeep. I spent about $700 on that ($3.50/ft). If you are building a buggy, that's a drop in the bucket to significantly increase the strength of the material on which the entire rig is built.

Even some of the high end rigs I've seen are built from HREW and I just don't get it. Building a $20-30K buggy and skimping on the tube because you wanted to spend $500 instead of $1000 on the material. :dunno:

Neal3000 · Jul 3, 2014

Re: Re: Help settle this Cold verses hrew question

knaffie said:
Steel all weighs the same. Mild steel, tool steel, hot rolled, cold rolled, HREW, DOM, chrome-moly, chromo, 1020, 4140, .......... Steel is all the same weight.

Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk

He might have meant that You can use a thinner wall cromo and have the same strength as heavier dom

pachary · Jul 3, 2014

Re: Help settle this Cold verses hrew question

bgredjeep said:
I don't get how cost can be such a big factor on this in the grand scheme of building a rig. I've got 200' of DOM I bought for some work I'm planning for my Jeep. I spent about $700 on that ($3.50/ft). If you are building a buggy, that's a drop in the bucket to significantly increase the strength of the material on which the entire rig is built.

Even some of the high end rigs I've seen are built from HREW and I just don't get it. Building a $20-30K buggy and skimping on the tube because you wanted to spend $500 instead of $1000 on the material.

This guy "gets" it!

Nuts · Jul 3, 2014

Where are the tests that show HREW isn't capable of handling what most of us on here put it through? Sure DOM is stronger, but chromoloy is stronger than that so why "skimp" and only get DOM? I've looked through the NHRA rule book and didn't see anything about HREW or DOM, it just states tube diameter and wall thickness for mild steel tubing. If its good enough for a 150+mph crash, its good enough for a 30mph tumble down a hill.

TacomaJD · Jul 3, 2014

Re: Re: Re: Help settle this Cold verses hrew question

AdamF said:
Where are the tests that show HREW isn't capable of handling what most of us on here put it through? Sure DOM is stronger, but chromoloy is stronger than that so why "skimp" and only get DOM? I've looked through the NHRA rule book and didn't see anything about HREW or DOM, it just states tube diameter and wall thickness for mild steel tubing. If its good enough for a 150+mph crash, its good enough for a 30mph tumble down a hill.

You're arguement is one sided. The point here, is that HREW is certainly safe in terms of not harming the occupants, but DOM doesn't bend as easily. You don't plan on crashing a drag car.....but you plan on crashing a rock crawler a lot....

The facts are, HREW bends easier than DOM. Where you may have bent tubing after a rollover with HREW, you may have not had a single piece bend had it been made out of DOM. Keeping it cosmetically sound for a longer period of time.

If you want to get technical, say you build a HREW chassis/exo cage....roll it once or twice, shits starts bending, but you don't give a **** what it looks like. I would wager that the bent places will create more stress on other points and joints of the chassis, worsening with every flop or roll, maybe even breaking welds or the tubing itself, if you continue abusing it.

My rig (built from HREW) isn't by any means a full tube chassis, so there are more voids whereas a full tube chassis would have much more bracing, but when I rolled off Loop Springs at Morris Mtn a couple years back (drunk and knocked t-case into Neutral.), my whole cage shifted and bent the front roof bar on passenger side (visible in pic below). It's not bad, but it annoys me because it's always the first thing I notice in pics. Was able to tweak the cage back in place with a porta power. The roll wasn't really a hard one either. And several have already stated DOM is harder to bend in a bender than HREW....this is where DOM shines and why DOM is always used for link bars instead of HREW.

End of thead? ^^^ pretty much sums it up and that's just from what I've read here and my own experiences.

Rollover vid
Toyota rollover at MMORV

Nuts · Jul 3, 2014

All arguments are 1 sided. If you agreed with both points there'd be no argument or you'd be fighting yourself lol. I totally agree that DOM is the better choice, but I also believe that HREW is a safe and legitimate option.

TacomaJD · Jul 3, 2014

AdamF said:
I also believe that HREW is a safe and legitimate option.

Hell you could make a PVC pipe exo cage if you ain't ever gonna put it to use, and say it's the baddest ass material ever!

865yota · Jul 4, 2014

Every chassis ive ever built has been from hrew and i beat the hell out of it.There is difference in strength from dom and hrew but if your worried about the cage failing its either not built right or u need chromoly