We decided that one of the biggest tasks and the first thing we wanted to have completed was the roll cage. We read lots of forum posts and reviews and we're looking at the jegster Kit from jegs. After talking with Justin from Pontiaxed racing we decided to order roll bar tube and bend the cage ourselves. Pontiaxed (Justin) used the jegster cage and he clued us in that some of the cage tubing with this kit is under sized.

We ordered roughly 120' of 1.75" Dom roll bar tube from a local supplier. Luckily our buddy has an account with them and got it delivered to his place for us. He actually let us use his bender to bend the cage as well. We used cardboard to make templates for the roll cage. We also took measurements and angles the best we could. But the cardboard was probably the best help.
After a quick two hours at our buddies shop with him and his bender we had almost the entire cage bent. We ended up redoing the halo a few days later and making it a few inches wider. We had a hand ratchet bender we borrowed for this.
Here's my dad committing to cutting the first 20' length of pipe down to around 11' which was for the main hoop. We bent the legs long and will cut them off to length once it's in the car. More on that later.

Here are the bent cage pieces warming up next to the Woodstove. It was a frigid 15 degrees out when we bent the cage and the pieces were too cold to touch once we got home. Notice the sandwiches heating up on the stove. Ya gotta eat!


Chump car makes it mandatory to have rear main hoop braces going back towards the rear shock towers of the car. In the Fiero the only way to do this was through the rear window. Not only did we need to remove the window for the cage, but we planned to replace it with plexiglass to save weight as well. We put duct tape and packing tape on both sides of the Windows before trying to remove it. The theory was that this would keep all the glass from falling out after it shattered. I used a spring loaded punch tool and it 100% shattered the window with absolutely no effort. Unfortunately the tape didn't work as planned and we got glass all over everything in the process of removing the window.

[This message has been edited by agfracing (edited 01-18-2016).]

We read up a ton on the best way to weld the cage. We came up with the conclusion that we needed to drill a hole in each corner of the floor pan where the cage is, so that the cage can drop down and give us access to 360* weld every joint. Luckily for us. My dad was able to borrow a tube notcher from someone he works with. We've never used one so we were a little worried about how well it would go.
The main hoop fits just about as perfect as we could Have hoped for.

Here's the first attempt at notching something. This is where the halo meets the main hoop. Somehow we got it absolutely perfect. All the notching went pretty smooth. Luckily we had the notcher because this would have been nearly impossible without it.

We got everything notched and in place, held together with ratchet stamps and tape since neither of us trust ourselves enough to weld or even tack the cage together. A guy we know who just started a fabrication/welding shop is Welding the cage for us. His welds are like artwork. He hooked us up big time in exchange for some advertising on the car.

The cage holes in the floor pan needed to be covered with 6"x6" plate steel to be legal. So we got to fabbing these plates before the cage was in the way. We pulled the cage pieces out and came up with four plates that looked like this. They are currently welded and solid but I don't have any pictures of them.

Also. Got a bunch of race car Christmas presents in the mail today. Poly bushing kit. Window net and mount kit. And some cage gussets which we ended up not using on the cage.


While some of this was going on, I was sitting in an OSHA safety class or something Boring like that and got a text from my dad saying he bumped the windshield with the halo while he was chexkong the figment. He then sent this picture.

Atleast now we can get a brand new windshield and find a way to put it in with clips and make it removable. Again. Shoutout to team Pontiaxed and their build thread for the idea of making it removable.
Alright. That's enough for tonight. The posts are almost caught up to where we are at currently. So maybe by tomorrow evening we will be up to date with our current progress. The fun stuff starts soon.

[This message has been edited by agfracing (edited 01-24-2016).]

Alright so its pretty hard to go back and try to remember everything we have done and in what order. This post is going to get us caught up or atleast to within the few last days. So from here on out I can update as we go.
Currently the cage is about 90% welded in. Im gonna throw a few pictures of the cage being built on here for everyone to check out.









These two pictures are cars we sold this week to finance race car stuff. 1986 fire gt. I drove this car all summer and it is the one that started the addiction. The 1987 monte carlo ss had no motor and we bought it a few weeks before this chump car started. We were gonna build something cool with it, but time and money are both ties up into the chump car.

[This message has been edited by agfracing (edited 01-25-2016).]