Many of you have probably read my other post whereby I described stuffing my new car into a tire wall the first time I drove it. Well, I'm planning on transferring my "stuff" into a new shell. I was wondering if I could have the cage cut out and welded into a new shell. The cage was brand new (less than a week old). The contact was on the front left corner of the car and the cage did not go through the firewall. I don't think the cage took a huge hit since the front of the car crumpled. Here is a photo of the car now after the crash:


Here is a pic of the cage before the crash:


I don't know much about metallurgy, but what is to stop one from popping welds, removing the cage piece by piece, and reassembling it in another identical car?

 

This is a very serious cage indeed. As to the metallurgy-the issue is one of heating the material versus strength. If you can cleanly cut the welds away with minimal heating then go for it. Take out large sections so that you are not redoing any more existing welds than necessary. I do not know what class you are in with the car, but it appears that there are several attach points that would put you in SCCA Production versus IT. The forward tubes that contact the wheel wells may need replacement-they are short pieces anyway-if they penetrate into the engine bay-check them carefully to make sure they are not distorted or the welds damaged. The halo and downtubes should be fine from what the pictures show. Good luck.

 

Hmm. It is "possible" but, since the primary cost is in labor, I'm not sure that it will be any more cost-efficient to do so. It might be that you can make it work by strategically sacraficing some (straight?) tubes by cutting them out completely then grinding the weld areas for new tubes.

I'm having a very difficult time picturing cutting the existing welds and reassembling it using all the existing tubing.

The biggest problem is going to be the mounting points on the car, if the plates are wrapped around the inside door sill. That mount on the rear turret will be the same kind of hard.

A friend took an Autopower bolt-in out of a crashed Rabbit once and it went "BOINNNG" when he undid the last floor bolt. The entire tub had deformed and preloaded the cage structure like a big spring...

K

 

I would save the main hoop.... not sure if anything else is going to be worth the time.

 

I think after you cut out all the pipes, most of them would turn out to be 1/2" to 1" too short for the new tub.

It really doesn't worth the time IMO.

 

fix the shell?

 

Not sure if it can be fixed properly... there are "ripples" in the roof and the door won't close any more (the driver side is shorter than it was before).

 

I would have a body shop look at it and see if they can get it *close* to factory spec....You may be able to save that chassis, although it is hard to tell from the pic....

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by jisu009 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I would have a body shop look at it and see if they can get it *close* to factory spec....You may be able to save that chassis, although it is hard to tell from the pic....</TD></TR></TABLE>

That would be my vote. If it's possible to save the chassis then it *might* save you a lot of time and money. If anything, it's worth looking into... what have you lost otherwise?

 

Here are some more pics of the car. I'd be interested in knowing if any of you have ever tried to repair a car that was damaged in this way and whether you were successful in making the car as good as it was before...

 

I have been thru something similar with the driver's side in particular. The door could not be opened. The core support and several crush panels had to be replaced along with the fender and door. If the A and B pillars are undamaged then repairing the chassis is a good choice. You will be quite surprised at what can be done on a frame machine. It is not cheap partswise. Will the car be as good as before-depends on the shop you have do it. The car I wrecked was actually better. Granted it was a street vehicle-but the machine could not care nor did the tech. Again find a quality shop. Frame machine time runs around $200 to start with.

 

I was at Sentry Paint & Body (Lilburn, GA) about a year ago and they had just finished moving a CRX cage from a bent tub to a new tub.

They cut the roof off both tubs and transferred the cage and put the roof back on. I'm not sure if they had to cut off any sections of the cage, but you could call them and ask them how they do it. I'm also not sure about the economics of it -- it's cheap for them to do since they have to time, tools and materials, but I'm not sure if it's worth paying for. That was a nice cage, so I understand wanting to keep it! Good luck either way.

-ewan

 

repair the car. A competant body shop can straighten things out and you wont have to start the building project up again. I would not cut out the cage and weld it into another car.

 

I'm going to try to find a frame guy to look at the car this week to see if it can be salvaged. People tell me "it won't ever be the same"... I wonder if they mean straightness or stiffness or both. One would think there would be solutions for either problem.

 

that looks like somthing that can be fixed.

What track did you do this at?

 

Last year,I had an accident with my CRX.
Front damage like yours.There was a gap between the top and the front door on the passenger side.

I've been thrue a frame shop.
They were able,had the tools and the knowledge to repaired the Rex,but since it was already been fix (before me),the guy say's that it won't be as strong as before...the cowl and the firewall were severly bent...because of the past incident.
He said the best way,would have been to find a complete front end...but I wasn't fervant of that idea since it was a 12 years old car and the rear quarter were already hit by rust.

So,I left that car alone and bought another project car,with a stiffer chassis.
aka a more recent car.

I hope you'll find something that will not cost an arm and a leg to come back soon!

Btw,was your helmet that hit the windshield?
Didn't you had a 5-6 points harness?

 

The track was St-Eustache. My 5-point belt wasn't installed, only the stock 3-point.

 

You went off in the Carocell?

This was during the driving schools?