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This paper shows the lightening approach for small vehicles by developing lower arm of the hollow extruded aluminum, which is the low cost material and has closed cross section. The manufacturing cost was reduced by developing the industrial method to form the developed lower arm of the extruded aluminum by cold press, without welding. In addition, the developed method forming of the heat-treated extruded aluminum reduces the manufacturing cost more, compared to the conventional method forming before the heat treating. The structure of the developed lower arm has the wide center part receiving the coil spring and the narrow end part connecting to the vehicle body with the bush. The center part has the same cross section as the extruded aluminum, and the end part was formed by shrinking the extruded aluminum by cold press.

The exhaust gas is getting to higher temperature in order to adapt higher power and lower fuel consumption of the engines, and the exhaust manifolds tends to use in more severe conditions. The exhaust manifolds of 660cc engines of the turbo specification had been made of the high-Si spheroidal graphite cast iron containing a small amount of Mo so far, but now it cannot help using Ni-resist for higher heat resistance. However, Ni-resist is extremely expensive because it contains much 35wt% nickel of the rare metal. Therefore, the development of the new cast iron having the performance and the cost between the conventional cast iron and Ni-resist is demanded. With such a background, the new spheroidal graphite cast-iron “Vanadium cast iron” for the low-cost exhaust manifolds that greatly improved the heat resistance than the conventional cast iron was developed.