A little tubing work.

[donsrods]

My Son Dan has been plugging away at building a roll cage and tubbing his Fox Mustang and he has gotten pretty far. Thought I would post some pictures of where it is right now. He still has a lot more tubes to add, like dash bar, two bars running down to the lower torque boxes, and some rails that will go to the front frame rails, but those will be easy compared to what he has had to fit so far.

It is going to be one strong, safe Mustang drag car for sure. It should pass tech to be certified for 7.50 seconds, although the car will never see those times.

Don



Front view:



Side view:



Door bars and subframe connectors:




Now he can put it up on the twirler and flip the car over to do the lower torque boxes and detail the underside.

 

[Gottkts]

Awesome fab work as always

 

[choppinczech]

Great stuff! [cl

 

[Dr Crankenstein]

Nice work. [clIt would appear he went over and above on the tube size, no?

... although the car will never see those times.

Never say never.

.

 

[donsrods]

Thanks, guys. Yeah, he went with 1 and 3/4 tubing with a .120 wall thickness and some of the tubing is 1 and 1/2 with .120 wall thickness. It will add some weight, but he is mainly going to street drive the car so getting it feather weight isn't an issue.

One thing that has been good is that he now has a bunch of practice on his tig welder. Hasn't used his mig much at all for this project.

Don

 

[Dirtyrat]

That looks great! After doing one cage inside a car, I give him huge props for how this one looks it is very difficult to get in and weld in a lot of areas...

 

[Tyster36]

Can i bring the kids over to play on your jungle gym. LOL Looks great. My 72 Camaro has a 8.50 cert chromoly in it.

 

[bob w]

That's a beautiful cage. Perfectionist at work.

You have to be a little careful when using .120" wall as it sometimes is thinner than NHRA's .118" spec. for mild steel. Many of the roll cage providers use .134" to assure no problems.

Main hoops in Chrome Moly only need to be .083".

 

[1952B3b23]

Wow thats one nice looking roll cage! Great work.

-Chris

 

[donsrods]

Thanks guys. I'm really proud of the work he is doing on it. The other night we got it up on the Auto Twirler so now he can flip it over to work on the underside.




Starting to roll it over...........



Upside down..............



And coming back up the other way.....



This thing is going to make it so nice to not only do welding on the underside, but to prime and paint the underside too.

Don

 

[Torchie]

Great workmanship Don. Like father. Like son.[cl
Those rotisserie's really make it nice to work on the bottom of the car.
Torchie.

 

[donsrods]

Thanks Torchie. It sure will make all the welds he needs to do on the upper control boxes a lot easier than laying on his back. But I gotta tell you, it was a little scary at first when we started to roll that car over, we were afraid it would topple over. Luckily, it is really well balanced and the car spins over with one hand.

Should have had one of these years ago. I am going to use it to turn over the 46 when I start working on it too.

Don

 

[05snopro440]

Thanks Torchie. It sure will make all the welds he needs to do on the upper control boxes a lot easier than laying on his back. But I gotta tell you, it was a little scary at first when we started to roll that car over, we were afraid it would topple over. Luckily, it is really well balanced and the car spins over with one hand.

Should have had one of these years ago. I am going to use it to turn over the 46 when I start working on it too.

Don

That's awesome work on that cage! I'm having a hard time seeing, where does the rotisserie connect to on the body? Will your '46 with the taller body be a little more "top-heavy" on it, or should it not make a difference?

A rotisserie would make some things way easier, for sure...

 

[maverickmk]

Absolutely beautiful work. That's going to be a really cool ride when he's finished. Thanks for the pics, Don.

 

[donsrods]

Thanks, Guys.

That's awesome work on that cage! I'm having a hard time seeing, where does the rotisserie connect to on the body? Will your '46 with the taller body be a little more "top-heavy" on it, or should it not make a difference?

A rotisserie would make some things way easier, for sure...

The rotisserie will handle almost any height car. There are two adjustments, one for height and one for getting the balance point of the car so it is just as heavy on top as it is on the bottom. You keep doing little adjustments on the two long screws until you reach a neutral balance spot and you know when you get to that point because the car will spin around with no effort.

On the Mustang it connects to adapter plates my Son built that bolt to the original bumper mounts. When I do the 46 I will make different adapters to bolt to the body mounting bolt holes so only the body is on it, not the frame.

It will also handle a body up to 3000 pounds, so with the light weight of the Mustang body is doesn't even know it is up there. I will probably use it to paint and detail the underside of the rpu body when that time comes. Pretty handy little tool.

This video sold us on how well it works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYX8koc8LJs

Don

 

[05snopro440]

Thanks, Guys.





The rotisserie will handle almost any height car. There are two adjustments, one for height and one for getting the balance point of the car so it is just as heavy on top as it is on the bottom. You keep doing little adjustments on the two long screws until you reach a neutral balance spot and you know when you get to that point because the car will spin around with no effort.

On the Mustang it connects to adapter plates my Son built that bolt to the original bumper mounts. When I do the 46 I will make different adapters to bolt to the body mounting bolt holes so only the body is on it, not the frame.

It will also handle a body up to 3000 pounds, so with the light weight of the Mustang body is doesn't even know it is up there. I will probably use it to paint and detail the underside of the rpu body when that time comes. Pretty handy little tool.

This video sold us on how well it works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYX8koc8LJs

Don

Thanks for the thorough explanation, that looks like an awesome unit.

We have a local guy here that makes this: http://resto-revolver.ca/, but it doesn't seem nearly as nice as the one you have!

 

[donsrods]

We looked at a few units before my Son decided to buy this one, and Auto Twirler makes 4 models. This is the "Pro" model and he upgraded it to air over hydraulic rams which make it much easier than pumping the jack handle to raise the car up.

That one you pictured looks pretty good too, just a different company going at the same idea a different way. One thing that impressed us was that the Twirler does not use a bolt to tighten down on the tubing to hold everything in place, it uses specially cut clamps that go around the outside of the tubing. Over time, as you tighten down one that uses a bolt the bolt will dimple the tube below which eventually makes it harder for the piece of tubing over it to slide smoothly over it.

We also looked at another one on display at Turkey Run last year before Dan pulled the trigger on the one he bought, and what we didn't like about it was that it used two pieces of steel that run the length of the body instead of a single one, like the Twirler. It seemed to us those two pieces of steel would be tripping you when you were working close up to the car.

Like I mentioned, it was a little hit to his wallet, but this thing should last for years and lots of projects.

Don

 

[donsrods]

Bob W, I asked Dan tonight what wall thickness he used on the entire cage and it is .134, not .120 like I thought. Thanks for the PM questioning it, shows how much I know about this stuff.

Don

 

[bob w]

Good he is using .134 wall. Seems like overkill but because of manufacturer's tolerances .120 can run too thin for the .118 NHRA spec. I'd bet NHRA intended for .120 wall to be okay.

Dan is doing a beautiful job on that cage.

 

[donsrods]

Thanks, Bob. Yep, we tend to overbuild everything and I should have known Dan would err on the side of heavy. He knows the car will be a little heavy to be super competitive, but he just wants to have some fun with it and drive it a lot on the street.

Don