"Homemade Vehicle" Washington State

[franklin2]

Sounds like some of these places get really technical about things. That being said, the person inspecting it, are they that technically versed and know what they are looking at? Over here in Va, the priority seems more about where the vehicle came from and it's birth right. Over here they would require a bill of sale or title from the various cars you are using to build the new car. With lots of reciepts, the state trooper will look it over, and then issue a new generated title for the car. If there is something obviously wrong with the build I am sure they would say something. But if the quality of the workmanship looks good throughout the car, they would generally pass it here.

 

[RegularGuy]

That's the beauty of being a part of the engineering department, this will most certainly be a unibody vehicle. Once the tube structure is complete, a mould goes around it and the fiberglass gets put in bonding it to the structure.
The tube structure only exists for the sake of having easy hardpoints and to simplify the finite element analysis

 

[don4331]

Sounds like some of these places get really technical about things. That being said, the person inspecting it, are they that technically versed and know what they are looking at?

My engineering professors were absolutely technically versed and knew what they were looking at - a couple were motor heads themselves and another worked on Avro Arrow. And that was point I was trying to make to RegularGuy - they knew exactly what they were looking at and what wasn't up to regulation.

Note: For the most part the crumple zones are outside the survival cell - those holes cut in the frame just behind the bumper, the beams that make installing larger tires difficult (they prevent wheels from entering passenger compartment), the anti-intrusion beams in the doors, etc.

Tube and beam structures are far easier to do FEA on. And I have seen a lot of FEA mistakes where because of incorrect assumptions in the model - gigo.