<story><title>France cuts two nuclear-powered submarines in half to make one new one</title><url>https://abc17news.com/news/national-world/2021/04/14/france-cuts-two-nuclear-powered-submarines-in-half-to-make-one-new-one/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bloak</author><text>That sounds like the notorious &amp;quot;cut and shut&amp;quot; thing where criminals create a dangerous vehicle for the second-hand market, except that it&amp;#x27;s from a different era. Seeing as a 1965 Mercedes is built rather differently from a typical modern car, and safety standards have changed since then, too ... any comments on how hard it is to this without compromising safety?</text></item><item><author>danboarder</author><text>This story reminded me of a project my father did with two 1965 Mercedes sedans; one was hit in the front, the other in the back. He cut them both in half where the roof meets the rear window, and welded and reassembled the two good halves into a perfectly functional car that we drove for years. Not the scale of the French submarine project, but the same kind of ingenuity -- it was still a big project to get everything rewired and all put back together, including bodywork and paint!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway0a5e</author><text>Combining vehicles like this is one of those things that isn&amp;#x27;t bad but gets the Reddit experts screeching because their only experience is that their mom&amp;#x27;s sister&amp;#x27;s boyfriend&amp;#x27;s uncle&amp;#x27;s roommate got swindled by someone doing a crap job on a Civic that they thought they were getting a good deal on.&lt;p&gt;Vehicles build on frames are cut and extended&amp;#x2F;shortened all the time as a part of routine modifications for commercial use and it&amp;#x27;s far less labor intensive to &amp;quot;do right&amp;quot; than a unibody vehicle.  Putting two good halfs together is no big deal and is a relatively standard operation, all the known techniques and whatnot transfers right over.  (I assume a 60s Mercedes falls into this category.)  Unibody vehicles are also routinely repaired in this manner in eastern Europe where it&amp;#x27;s cheaper to buy wrecked stuff from the west and fix than to buy new.  In the west the limo and mobility van industry does very similar things (only they&amp;#x27;re inserting stuff in the middle rather than repairing the car)&lt;p&gt;People do cut and weld jobs all the time for their own personal vehicles and classic cars. When you&amp;#x27;re doing it for your own car or a car you don&amp;#x27;t intend to flip you can afford to spend the time to do it right.&lt;p&gt;Quick hackjobs are the issue, not the technique.</text></comment>
<story><title>France cuts two nuclear-powered submarines in half to make one new one</title><url>https://abc17news.com/news/national-world/2021/04/14/france-cuts-two-nuclear-powered-submarines-in-half-to-make-one-new-one/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bloak</author><text>That sounds like the notorious &amp;quot;cut and shut&amp;quot; thing where criminals create a dangerous vehicle for the second-hand market, except that it&amp;#x27;s from a different era. Seeing as a 1965 Mercedes is built rather differently from a typical modern car, and safety standards have changed since then, too ... any comments on how hard it is to this without compromising safety?</text></item><item><author>danboarder</author><text>This story reminded me of a project my father did with two 1965 Mercedes sedans; one was hit in the front, the other in the back. He cut them both in half where the roof meets the rear window, and welded and reassembled the two good halves into a perfectly functional car that we drove for years. Not the scale of the French submarine project, but the same kind of ingenuity -- it was still a big project to get everything rewired and all put back together, including bodywork and paint!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Tade0</author><text>My friend is a car mechanic and his weekend car is a 1985 Nissan Z31, which he welded from two halves - front and back.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s physically &lt;i&gt;possible&lt;/i&gt; to do it and maintain reasonable safety but you need proper equipment, skills and time.&lt;p&gt;The frame is generally not designed to be welded like that, so without reinforcement it will be significantly weaker.&lt;p&gt;He did is as a hobby project but generally done properly such operations are not cost-effective.&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless it&amp;#x27;s still a service some shops provide at the cost of safety.&lt;p&gt;My aunt used to have such a car - she only noticed because she was blowing through sets of tires - the halves were misaligned(rotated) by less than one degree in each axis, but it was enough to make proper tire alignment impossible.</text></comment>