icarl wrote:
Ok, I think what you are saying is that the moment of inertia that you were talking about before takes into account not just area but also geometry. So then can we say that the metal that has a larger diameter has a kind of mechanical advantage because of the greater radius or distance from the center.
Surely. Consider three flat bars laying on top of each other. Try to bend them in the thin direction. Now weld those three flats into an I beam shape and try to bend them. The I beam is magnatudes "stronger", but has the same area. The reason is because the material is moved away from the centroid of the bend. Same goes for square or round tube of different sizes, or a rectangular tube being bent in the easy or hard direction.
Worth it or not, solid is stronger if the same OD, and that was the question. You don't need to ask a pirate, I'm right here

Apparently Green Renegade knows his stuff too. Nice to have someone to agree that I'm not making this crap up.
As far as equal deflection at max stress, I'm not sure how that is useful.
When the solid reaches max stress, the tube has long since broken / bent permanently. The one with the higher section modulus bends less for a given load (like half the weight of the jeep, if the jeep were teetering between the left pair of tires and the right rock rail, whatever).
I don't plan on using much solid in my designs, as it is often just too darn heavy, but the question is answered now, and I think more than sufficiently.
18% more strength is not "long since" considering a 64% increase in weight.