Competition Engineering 10 point installed

[slowboi]

I finished installing my 10 point cage today. Now I have to weld up the floor and paint. This is the 10 point pre-bent cage with an optional x-bar and door bar kit installed. I was lucky enough that i was going to be replacing my roof skin anyway so no roof made it a little easier.

The quality of the cage is good, it will be very tight to the roof of the car. 6 points were welded to the frame, and its a mild steel cage. I added gussets and a few extra bars just for my own piece of mind. On to the pics!

 

[slowboi]

 

[RED LS1]

I'm no chassis expert but I have got quite a few built professionally. I'm seeing quite a few issues with what you've built there. It looks like you have a lot of time invested though so nice job.

 

[slowboi]

Lol, ok well I'm no expert either, but I'm here to learn. I followed competition engineering's directions. There are some extra bars I added but I fail to see how that would do anything negative ........ What do you see?

 

[RED LS1]

Man, I'll tell you what. I'm not the kind of guy that hates on peoples stuff. I do think it looks really good and I'd be surprised if any tech guys busted your balls. I'm not sure there's any problems on that department. I probably already said more than I wanted too. Anything I say may be easily argued and proved wrong by someone who knows more. As stated, I have a paid some money and had some really impressive roll bars and cages done by a really skilled shop so that's how I know anything at all.

1. Those welds are very questionable. It doesn't look like the heat was up high enough maybe? There's not a lot of weld penetration. It's all beaded up and sitting on top of the bars. Those bars can get knocked right off in a real accident or rollover situation. At some points you Stopped and started again leaving gaps.

2. It's my understanding that gussets are to be used in the event that a portion of the bar is being obstructed and can not be welded. A gusset will reinforce that area. Seems like you used them as a decorative item. lol

3. It's not necessary for a full 8.50 cage to have the lower door sill bars. However, each kit comes with them. It appears you got crafty and cut yours in half and re used them for door bar supports. For the amount of effort you put into them you would have got better structural support using them as intended. They are meant to tie the main hoop to the front flooring.

4. It appears you did something similar with the rear trans tunnel bars. I can't see how they'd be beneficial with what you did with them. They need to tie the trans tunnel to the main cage. You have them upside down and running from the main hoop to the main hoop.

5. I'm not sure where your rear X-bracing ends up behind the rear seat area. The best place to tie into is your shock mounts which I believe are in the trunk of these cars. It looks like yours are just welded to the body structure behind the seat. I could be wrong though. I'm not sure where you have them.

Again. The things looks good and i'm sure it will work fine. I picked up a few fundamentals through the years and thought I would pass them on.

 

[slowboi]

Lots of good advice, I'm certainly not thinking your "hating" I did take some creative license.
The welds are done with a miller 211, they penetrated, I chose to spot them in and lap each weld rather than drag the pool across the seam. Way more time consuming obviously and more material pools on each weld, yes they look a little lumpy but they penetrated spotting each weld allows me to focus the heat and make sure of that. The miller 211 was running pretty hot.

The x brace and the door bars are done using some creative license the minimum requirement for nhra is met without them so really I put them where I wanted. The gussets are also placed where I wanted to combat twisting force. I removed the roof so I could weld all the way around all the bars so they are not needed to pass tech. A single door bar is required so I placed the other ones so I could get in and out of the car easier.

I believe I'll have no issue at tech, but advice taken, I'm more of a hotrod guy so I do some things for decoration. Also the trans tunnel bars going from the harness bar I purposely shortened. I still wanted to support the cross bar/harness bar, but if you look at all the cages in this forum no one seems to weld anything to the floor. I don't think I would need them to pass tech as I didn't see a requirement for those in the nhra rule book.... On that point I may be wrong though.

In all honesty I will be taking this car to the track maybe twice a year, I did the cage to tighten the chassis for auto cross.

 

[slowboi]

I double checked all the welds prior to painting today... the pictures really make them look poor they are way flatter in person. I think when I wire wheeled them to clean them to paint the glare off of them made them look more pronounced than they actually are. Heres a few more pics for interest sake. Like I said above I didnt join this forum to have sunshine blown up my but, all valid points above. We will see what happens at tech

 

[Chuck Leeper]

What RedLS1 said about the welding..^^^^^^^^^^

 

[slowboi]

Yes I commented on them above, we will see if I pass tech, If not I have a lot of grinding ahead of me but I am certain I penetrated.... live and learn I guess.....

 

[RED LS1]

To be honest, you probably won't have an issue at tech. I have seen waaay worse pass right through.

You did a really good job getting a whole cage accomplished. I'm a little spoiled because I always went straight for the Chromoly, tig welded, custom bent cages. you know something, I don't have the ability to do that myself so kudos for doing your own thing. You probably have $350 invested where I will spend $2500 for the same. Just a little cleaner.

It really looks a lot better painted too. What did you use? Brush or can?

 

[slowboi]

Thanks, yeah I'm into this for about $400 with the paint. I ended up using a can of vht roll cage paint. It's supposed to be a single stage paint with an etch mixed in. I etch primed the cage first just in case but the paint worked nice. 2 cans did the whole thing.