joel n

I have posted on here a few time over the year. Mostly little things that i get stumped on. But this time i am really lost on what i should do. Ill give a little history first.
We have slowly converted this car into a roadrace only car. Its a 1995 Del Sol VTEC car. The builders goal was to have a car that did everything. Roadrace, rally, targa, Track days, tima attacks, and could be legally drivin to all events. Plus for targa newfoundland, and performance rallys it needed to be MVI (road legal). It would do everything okay. Nothing great. Anyway when the new owner bought it he wasnt sure what road to take. Leave it as it sits or make it a true roadrace car. Anyway, He asked me to run with him, his car, my mechanical knowledge. So 3 years later and I think for the most part its almost a full roadrace car. But I have been looking at the rollcage heavly ever since I started to race with the owner. Its a Rally aproved cage. CARS legal. It has done targa newfoundland and a local performance rally. But as i looked at the cage more and more the less i wanted to look. As i could see were it was heading. Full gutting and rebuilding a new cage. So we are basicly done the season. 1 fun 3 hour race left. So i wanted to post and get some input from people that know. Nobody on here knows the builder (i am guessing) So the work will be the toplc, not the builder. lol.

Few things right off the bat that i never liked.
rear stays are bent. they are like this to keep the rear window intact. Not the best picture, but when it goes through the body it bend ups to meet the main hoop. Also they are welded to the rear brace but i really dont like any of it. id rather them mount on the strut towers base and have a X from the bottom of the right one to the top of the left one.

The roof is next as I dont like the right bar as its bent down. It was bent during the build.

Not a big problem as i could cut it out and replace. But theres more.
He built the main hoop, and a front hoop. ( drivers floor up and around to the pasenger floor. and them put the roof bars in with a X in the roof. As you can see in that pic.

The drivers side and pasenger side are the same as its a rally cage, they both need side protection of equalness. so heres what he did. I dont really see anything wrong here.

Heres a driverside shot.

Top of windsheild.


But then i notice were front bars locate on the floor they were never welded all the way around. Door sill is in the way.



Then when i was pulling the car ahead by hand one day i felt something sharp. This is were the drivers lower door bar is welded to the main hoop.

There is a gap there. its about the size of my pinky finger.

Then i really started to look around. and guess what, the drivers upper bar was worse.

Thats not even close. Other little things i found were gaps in the weld. One in the roof X brace you can see the tubing meet inside

Not a great picture but you get the idea.

So after finding all this I figured it wasnt worth tring to save the cage. Just cut it all out and start from scratch. Should i try and save any of it? The car is working great. Banging on the door for Fastest FWD time at the track. Super reliable as well. 3 years and we only missed 2 races. Ignition in 1 race and a failed fuel pump in another. Basicly the cage is the last part of the origial build. Everything else has been corrected or replaced. Car has never been wrecked. Bent the bumper bar once and the drivers fender took a hit before i raced it.

The shop i work for has built cages before. They make this one look really bad. So we have a tubing bender and good welder. The tubing is about $4 a foot here for 1.5X.095 DOM. So your talking about $700 to build a cage with nascar door bars. Maybe a bit more.

Any help would be great. And if the Builder happens to come across this post, Sorry. I just needed a little unbias input from other people. Not local races who seem pretty bias toward one another.

redzcstandardhatch

why not carefully clean and reweld?

or, since it looks like a very good design, cut at welds carefully (With a cutoff wheel, works great actually), In a few places, and grind welds down nearly completely, replace a few pieces if need be for fitment, and weld it back in

you can easily salvage most of that. The door design is great, IMO.

914Racer

I would rebuild it. While you are in there cut the windshield off and run it as an open cockpit car. Move the cage bars out to the front of the cockpit, so you can get more leg protection.

BTW, 700 is materials, you haven't factored how much 40+hours of your time is worth. There is a reason cages cost real money, they are labor intensive if you build it right.

joel n

The last cage the shop built took 53 hours, and that was the 4th or 5th cage they did. I am guessing id be looking at 80 or more hours. lol. Myself and a freind are hoping to do it with help from 1 of the guys from the shop. But the time has been taking into account. plus the fact that i have other work to do. last race is next weekend. the oct 13. first race is next may 25 or so.

Caoboy

OP said it needs to stay road legal, wouldn't cutting out the windshield make it not road legal?

joel n

Figured i would update with some of the great things I found.

So we knew the main hoop braces were bent. But they were covered up. So after i uncovered them i found this.


I thought it was just the passenger side one, but when i was doing a practice bend i used the drivers side one and it broke half the weld when it started to bend. Then I just broke it in 2 by hand. Heres a picture of them side by side. You can just see on the other one were it was welded and ground down to hide it. The weld is on top of the pipes holding them together. it never penitraded the tubing full. I was told its mostly cold welding. Didnt fully understand untill they pointed it out on the pipe i broke. You can see the pipe and the weld sitting on top of it. Also took the time and went over the rest main hoop and front hoop to make sure they wernt peaced together. couldnt find anything after 30min of checking.


We removed all the wiring from the rear that wasnt needed. only fuel pump and rear lights left. Planing to do the same under the dash and the engine bay when we switch motors.


After I unscreewed all the rear trim, I found out he never welded the roof fully. If you couldnt access it would kinda understand, but since it took me 5min to remove the trim i dont understand.


Ill post pictures on the rear bars tomorrow and the rest of the work so far. I just needed a short brake from grinding. lol. Working on installing new roofbars now. giving us another 2-3 inchs of head room. Plus the new bars will be farther out then our helmet now. yay safty.

Davidss

Since some of the welds are questionable I would recommend buying a box of gussets and adding them everywhere.

joel n

Not a bad idea. The only old welds will be on the main hoop witch include the harness bars, And the front hoop to the floor. We will be putting gussets on the roof X brace and both left and right nascar door bars. I wasnt a big fan of bending the roof bars, but in a Del Sol theres no other way. There is zero room. So a little extra bracing will be added. Hoping the next time a do a cage it will be from scratch and in something a bit more EGish.

Is it okay to install gussets for the bars to the floor?

Davidss

Yes, However SCCA rules (for some classes) state no more than 2 gussets per connection and no thicker than .125. And although I can't seem to find it now I remember reading in another rule set that gussets can't go further than 6 inches from the base of the connection.

I am currently building my first cage here are some of the gusset-ed base plates:

joel n

We don't really have much for rules. The class we run is stupidy open. Ill add 1 gusset per-bar-end, to the floor. Ill try tomorrow to get pictures up.

joel n

Well new cage is done. Minus a few loops to hold the rightside net in place, but we need more interior installed to figure out were it will sit. I didnt keep track of time but it took about 5 weekends in total. Working about 6-10Hs a day. The worst was cutting and grinding out the old cage parts. That took as much time as the new bars being bent and installed. We ended up removing much more interior then i thought we would but it was for the better. Plus we dont have anymore buttwelded pipes. Its all painted a flat gray, and looks much better IMO then the Dark Green it was before. Might not show all the drit as bad either. My Bosses ITB golf is this colour as well.

So the drivers door bars, roof bars, rear bars and front dash bar are all new.






That one of the 3 ITB golf in the background. Its going to be a fun summer with 3 ITB golf 1 E36 M3 and the Del Sol all needing prep.

Putting the interior back in the car today and hoping to be done tomorrow, minus a new reay window. We need some lexan to form around the cage.
New 96 spec ITR swap on it was from hmotorsonline.com Great guys to deal with. we will swap the moroso pan over and put a new timing belt, water pump on it. Trans needs to have the syncrotech diff and Gear-X 4.78 ITR final drive switched over. when thats all out i have a manual rack to install, and we will remove some of the wiring harness when we the motor is out. Lighting wiring mainly.

Tyson

Catching up with this thread.

Wow that was seriously shady. Can't believe the rear down tubes were like that. I assume you'll just cut holes in the trunk door for the straight bar now? Did the window separating wall just bolt off? Or you cut it out?

The door bars are interesting. Do you think there would have been enough room for the seat to go back if you put the anchor in the lower corner instead of the shelf?

joel n

We ended up just cutting the hole bulkhead from behind the seat. We put a bar across to replace the brace we cut out. the rear bars just miss the trunk lid. It will need another set of pins to hold it in place at the front. The origanal builder had a good rear window setup, he installed a peace of plexyglass right into the factory spot. I will keep the factory mounding and will try my best to mold a peace of lexan around the rear tubes. Hoping to get it around the outside of the cage, so when its all together it looks normalish. lol.

We didnt replace the rear main hoop. looked good. When the origanal builder did the car there wouldnt have been room for the main hoop down on the floor. He used factory honda seats with bolts welded to the seat bottom, not the frame but just the steal under the foam. then just bolted them though the floor. He had the seat far back. We ran it this way for 2 years, crazy i know. we put a FIA seat in last year and in a spot wear we like it. Now theres lots of room, but if anyone above 5.8 gets the car he would have problems with the main hoop.

I think we talked about 3-4 different ways to do the door bars, but i really dont like the setups that run from the rear main hoop forward THEN bend out into the door then back to the main hoop. Id rather loose a inch back next to the seat and have less of a chance of it bending in. This way if we are hit it will be pushing on the front hoop, rear hoop and the door sill bar. The worse part is like many people said, the original cage was a good setup just poor install.

At the shop right know putting the interior back together. Dash is in, but oh so smooth me cracked the windsheild installing the front dash bolt. Bit of a pissoff but now i can get paint on the front tubes better when the front windsheild is out. Plus getting rid of a original honda windshild thats pitted up a bunch.

joel n

I didnt have time to post pics ill try later,
But the trans guy here at work showed me how to switch the Mfactory diff and Gear-x FD from the SIR box over to the Type R box. Found out 4th gear syncro was distroyed. And the diff had about 2MM of play. I think ill do the trans work from hear out. Paul payed a good bit of money to have that trans built and from we can tell, they did a poor job at best,

Put a Timing belt, water pump, and a set of plugs in the Type R motor. switch to the Moroso pan, and after a little work it was in the car last night. we built the oil presure up before we started it, and after pluging the ECU in, it started right up. We were nervouse about the engine as we never bought a motor sight unheared. But what a nice sound when it started. Smooth, quit, not even a hint of a rattle on start-up.

If anyone is looking for a honda motor swap, call the guys at Hmotorsonline.com. great people and sent us a great engine from what i can tell.