Landracing Forum
Bonneville Salt Flats Discussion => Build Diaries => Topic started by: Rex Schimmer on February 15, 2019, 03:03:57 PM
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A good friend of mine bought a new (to him) roadster last year to put his killer banger in. This car has run at the salt for over 10 years and has gone over 200. This year the SCTA decided that they should take a closer look at the cage, and it ended up that my friend never got a chance to run as they found the cage not constructed to specs. This actually from a safety stand point was the right thing to do, as the cage was completely out of SCTA specifications!)Only the two tubes that make up the over head part of the cage were the required 1-5/x 1/8 wall tubing all of the rest of the cage was under sized in diameter and also wall thickness. Some of it was 4130 and some mild steel. My friend contacted me to see if I would be interested in updating the cage to meet the latest SCTA specs. As my son, Duke, is not working right now I pulled him on the project and we agreed to do a new and to spec cage. Duke is doing all of the actual fabrication and welding and after looking at the pics you can see why! I have attached some pics of the original cage and a couple of what Duke has completed up to now.
Rex
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Looks to me that somebody should be hiring Duke!
Sid.
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Just awesome Rex. The kid is an artist and Sid is right.
Well done Duke. The roadster owner got lucky!!! :cheers: :cheers: :cheers: :cheers:
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Wow, that is really nice. I thought you guys were just changing the cage, it looks like an almost complete new car (well, upper half anyway)
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Sid,
Duke is off to Europe in a couple of weeks to climb rocks (his other hobby) for a couple of months, hopefully he will have the base cage completely welded and a few other items before he leaves. I will probably do the finish details. I am probably going to redo most of the interior panels and so some work on the seat and get all of the body panels to fit up. Detail work that takes time. And as saltracer1 was saying it will be pretty much a new deal under the skin.
Duke may look for a "real" job after he returns (he has a degree in Industrial Engineering) or if he can find enough fab work to keep him busy in our shop he may just keep working here.
Rex
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Tell Duke to stay off the Eiger Nordwand!
Regards, Neil Tucson, AZ
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Just a couple of pictures to show why Duke is the welder on our team!
Rex
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Very nice work. He has a good hand as we say. :cheers: :cheers: :cheers:
Pete
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Really nice work.
Skip Pipes
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Looks like he had a good teacher Rex.
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A+ Rex!!
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Welds like a young man with good eyes.... wish the Bockscar's welds looked that good :| :cheers:
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Well Duke is pretty much done with the cage, and is off to France to climb rocks for a couple of months. I am going to do the tin work on the inside and get some of the other things mounted. I have included a couple of pics of the finished cage. The two front tubes that run to the hoop that the grill shell mounts on are removable. Any comments regarding things we may have missed would be appreciated.
Rex
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Rex, what is the lateral head restraint plan....
Looks dang good, Kid's got talent :cheers:
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Stainless, The "plan" is to use the SFI tubing foam on the horizontal bar in the cage. They are 15 inches apart and with 1 inch foam that gives us 13 inches and most helmets are 10-11 inches in dia we should have around 1 1/2 inches per side of clearance. There will be a one inch thick SFI pad on the back and more of the tubing foam over the top. I did this on a cage I did a couple of year ago on a 914 Porsche that was similar in construction and it easily passed.
Thanks for the comment.
Rex