Chassis Material

[spiffyspleen]

Our team is considering making a custom chassis for the first time and is debating what material would work the best. We are considering aluminum, fiberglass, and wood. Here are some pros and cons that we have come up with:

Aluminum Pros:
We are very familiar with it
It's possible to weld it
Its strong

Aluminum Cons:
It's heavy(.098 lbs/in^3)

Fiberglass Pros:
It's lighter than aluminum(I read somewhere that it is about 70% of the weight, I don't have exact details though)

Fiberglass Cons:
Not as strong
Can't weld it
We've never used it

Wood Pros:
It looks really nice
We're from Oregon where logging is a big industry so we would kind of be representing our area
It's light, I got a density table:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wo...sity-d_40.html
and if I calculated correctly Douglas Fir, which seems to be about average for the different types and is a common tree in our area, is about a fifth as heavy as aluminum, .019

Wood cons:
It's not as strong
You can't weld it

Any more thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Again, it is our first year making our own chassis so we don't have any experience with this kind of stuff.