These pictures are a little dark, so please bare with me.
The first shots shown here is the car before the roll cage fabrication started. The interior is gutted (saved it of course) and the engine is removed. The car came with 14x6 wheels and sat very high off the ground. So high in fact that you could slide under the car and remove the gas tank without lifting up the car. You can see that it sits higher than the Honda in front of it. The front fascia was removed because of the crushed bumper, which had only cosmetic damage (it hit a cement flower box in the snow). You can see in the engine compartment (moving clockwise) the ground, drive shaft with balancer, steering rack, fuel filter, master cylinder, battery tray, and the large silver object is the manual transmission (just in case you were wondering). Not shown is the missing gas tank. It was removed to prevent ourselves from blowing up when welding in the roll cage.
The beginning construction of the roll cage (shown below), has the main hoop that is located behind the driver/passenger doors. It is lined up right with the filler neck. It is a giant inverted "U" shaped bar that spans the width of the car. In order to install the Main Hoop we had to drill holes into the floor. The Main Hoop drops through the floor, welded to the forward located door bars, and then "jacked" into place after it is welded together. There are heavy steel plates that are inserted between the main hoop and the floor that lock it into position. Next come the bars that cross over the top of the doors and travel down to the floor. There are also cross bars that travel from the rear right corner to the front left corner of the ceiling. And another across the top of the windshield (being held together by Tim). The cage it so tight at this point, it is flexing some of the interior body panels.
The construction of the front hoop (just below the windshield) is completed along with supports attached to the firewall. There is another view of the bar that travels across the top of the door and down to the floor. The brown stuff on the firewall was the sound deadener that was removed to save weight. It was removed here and off the floors beneath each seat in the dead of winter so it would literally shatter as it came off the floor. The yellow colored line is the seam sealer, also put on the car from the factory. I didn't remove this because I would like to keep the car in one piece and not rust.
The door bars are added next. Notice the missing steering column (Tim need room to weld the other side together). There is also a "petty bar" that comes down from behind the driver's head down to the passenger side corner. This is used to absorb more "roll over" impact. This is an optional bar from the rules. I added it because of the "thin" body material the car is made of. You can never be "too" safe.
The shots below show the roll cage from the rear. The rear bars are attached here. The strut towers have plates attached to them, which hold the roll cage, help relieve twisting of the unibody, and any load during a "roll over". More cross bars are added from left to right and diagonally. The second shot from the rear shows a better view of the "petty bar". It travels from behind the driver's head down to the floor/fire wall (passenger side of the car).
It took about a week to complete the cage working on it about every night after work. Lots of beer, fast food and welding/grinding smoke was consumed during the process. We even caught the under coating on fire several times welding to the floor and strut towers. Things that I might have done differently now that I know......primered the cage tubing prior to welding (except for the ends being welded). I should have ordered more roll cage tubing too. I ordered 90 feet of it and had to borrow another 10 feet to finish the cage. And having some left over would have been nice too. So if you are going to build yourself a cage get about 120 feet of tubing. The extra tube is good for covering up mistakes.
I have many people to thank for this opportunity and especially TIIIIIMMMMMMMM! who welded the cage together.
Last updated 2/18/99
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