The Alchemist - UAWD Time Attack Car - Roll Cage Part 2

Second trip over to Rally/Race Developments and more progress with the mock-up complete. Ryan started the process of doing the final welding for the main hoop, down tubes, roof bars and also designed and welded the door rails. Ryan prefers to use 2 continuous pieces of tubing instead of how some cages are down with an “X” for the door bars which has one continuous bar and the second bar is cut in half and welded to the other tube. Doing this design he feels it is a stronger design with less points of failure. In our case he lowered the bars slightly over where he has done them in Rally cars for better entry/exit of the car since there’s much less space in a 4DR then the typical 2DR car. Ryan was also able to get the bars very tight to the b-pillar which helps for space inside the car for the driver and passenger. You can also see how tightly everything fits up to the A-Pillar which is a sign of a well designed cage. We decided to maintain the factory dash bar so this did change how the cage was done at the front end as the legs had to be placed before the dash bar. We did however tie the cage into the dash bar so it still offers the strength but allows us to maintain the factory dash without much issue. From this point what’s left is to tie the cage into the front strut towers, add some bars between the A-Pillar down through the door bars and then a bar from the main hoop to the back wheel well plate. Then add the harness bar portion and gusset anywhere that needs added strength and she’s done. In the next entry we’ll show you the finished product so stay tuned!