Ladders and shells

The backbone of any vehicle is its chassis. There are many types of chassis, but the most common is the ladder-frame chassis and the unibody.

The former gets its name from the thing you use to climb onto a roof. Two long parallel beams are joined by transverse struts – the more struts, the stronger the ladder frame.

This type of chassis is especially suitable for vehicles that carry or tow heavy loads but it’s also popular in 4x4 vehicles because it allows moderate twisting.

Another advantage of a ladder-frame chassis is that you can relatively easily remove and replace the suspension, axles and even raise the bodywork on such a chassis. Think of the skeleton of a whale: the entire animal is basically draped over that considerable spine.

If a ladder-frame chassis can be compared to a whale’s skeleton, a unibody is more like a tortoise’s shell. In a unibody chassis, the ladder frame is absent, and the floor pan and body are fused to form a single structural unit.

A vehicle with a unibody weighs less, is cheaper to manufacture and is statistically safer in a collision because the entire bodywork helps to absorb the impact.

A unibody cannot carry as much load as a ladder frame, but its biggest drawback is that it’s difficult to modify. The bodywork of an SUV with a unibody cannot easily be raised and it requires next level engineering skills to replace the suspension and axles of such a vehicle with more rugged off-road parts.

Examples of modern vehicles with ladder frames are the new Suzuki Jimny and the Jeep Wrangler, while the Kia Sportage and all Land Rovers used to have ladder frames but now feature unibodies.

Tentco Ammo box dinner set

If you don’t want to shop around for the individual items, you could consider this ammo box. There are six dinner plates, side plates, bowls, mugs and glasses, and six knives, forks, dessert spoons and teaspoons. The plates, bowls and mugs are made of ABS plastic.

Price

R1 385 from Camp & Climb. go! Drive & Camp says Everything comes securely fitted inside two foam inserts with cut-outs for each set of items.