I haven't put it in the mall yet, going to do that this weekend when I will be back in my hometown to take pics. I had all the rest of the pics and info to finish the thread but got discouraged with the amount of time it was taking to do and the lack of audience participation (for lack of a better term). Plus getting married, moving, and starting a new job took its toll on my free time. I'll see if I can finish it up just for the sake of completeness

Edit:
And just to add to your statement, I think if I totaled up all the receipts just for the purchase of the car and the parts to get it ready for chumpcar (with free tools and labor) it came to around $6k. We did do a lot of things that weren't necessary but made for a better car. Then of course you have the fees for entering a race, for the car and each participant, then there's fuel, tires, any repaired parts during the race, etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally happy I did it and that racing weekend was one of the most fun I've ever had. It's just a little deceiving hearing "Racing for $500!"

[This message has been edited by kwagner (edited 12-18-2012).]

One of the biggest tasks in creating this track car has been the design and construction of the cage. The rules require a full cage, but still allows for some choices. For example, the door bars can be either parallel bars (think NASCAR) or an "X" design. We are not allowed to use a single bar coming down from the main hoop past the drivers door to the floor.

We took the opportunity to troll through the forum looking for pictures or recommendations.
Team Pontiaxed http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/083726.html
SCCAFiero http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/084322.html
and "Chariot of Fire" http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/085472.html

And we followed up on discussions that lead to different cage builders or kits. Though Doug Chase has evidently stopped producing mail order kits, we found informative pictures at http://www.chaserace.com/cage/fierocage.html and http://www.chaserace.com/cage/ssccfiero.html

We started by cleaning out the cabin as much as possible. You can see that we left the main harness intact as it passes through the bulkhead. Having it in place made sure that we never forgot to make allowances for it. BUT we absolutely removed the ECU. We NEVER weld on the car with the computer in place. I know it's isolated, but why take the chance?




We know that we have to add a base plate at all points that the cage connects to the body. This helps spread the load in case the cage is actually called upon to work. We went through half a dozen wire wheels during the build. The chemicals they treat the base metal with really does penetrate the surface and makes it difficult to get good welds.




Smoothing out the base material
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[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 07-06-2017).]

The base plate is starting to come together. It's this little stuff that really kills build-time
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Now repeat for the other side....................

[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 07-06-2017).]

Our floor brace fully welded into place.



I did not get any shots of the tubing actually being bent, but this is an early initial fit of the main hoop. I added arrows at two points of interest. The A arrow shows some flat plate braces we welded to the top of the rear bulkhead. These helped to assure we always had couple reference points as we tweaked the hoop. Ultimately they were also welded solid. The "B" arrow shows some relieving we did to the roof structure. We made sure the hoop was as far towards the driver's side as possible in order to assure clearance for the driver's helmet. In addition, we kicked the "halo" out to the left as far as possible. So we actually cut into the first layer of the roof structure at that point. The cage should more than compensate for cutting into the structural pieces.






You can see the clearance in the left roof structure. That's just a piece of EMT temporarily holding the halo in place. It's not a permanent brace. Rich used a lot of EMT as an aid in designing the cage, and transferred finished measurements to the actual cage tubing. I have no idea how, I think it might have involved math. Maybe some geometry, but probably no calculus. I just washed parts.








A real common sight for those neighbor folks driving by.
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[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 07-06-2017).]

The base plates for the front down-tubes was significantly easier than those for the main hoop. The floorboard structure was a little more straightforward. These are the plates we made to fit the floor.








A little trimming, It's dark out there!




The front down-tubes are tacked in place




And it looks as though we have enough head-room.

[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 07-06-2017).]

I gave our reason to add a dash bar to the cage. It just creates a much stronger and safer structure. We had not yet decided what we would do about gauges. But it was assumed that we could make everything work with the dash bar. The dash bar also provided a point to mount a steering column.


We purchased a new steering shaft from Speedway motors. http://www.speedwaymotors.c...ing-Shaft,15270.html It' a thick walled (.120") 3/4 O.D. DOM shaft. This is commonly used in track cars. It's much lighter than the stock column and removes the possibility of problems with tilt or locking mechanisms. We are definitely not using any of the electrical system related to the stock column, so it also helped clean everything up. We used the steering shaft mounting bracket from Coleman racing products http://www.colemanracing.co...t-Weld-On-P3963.aspx and connecting the bracket to the shaft is a pair of over-sized heim joints designed to work with the 3/4" steering shaft.




Here you can see how we actually built the steering column.




If you look closer, at the driver end of the shaft you can see a splined shaft. Those splines connect to the quick-disconnect steering wheel hub/connector.




That's followed by the two heims. We used two in order to help with supporting the shaft as you can see in the top image. We then used a u-joint from Speedway motors to alter the angle of the shaft towards the rack. From there, Rich cut another section of the 3/4" steering shaft and ended up sliding it INSIDE a portion of the original Fiero steering shaft . That allowed for the final connection back onto the rack and pinion. The fact that the two shafts overlapped was fortuitous as we would never want to just butt weld the two together. We were careful to make sure that the new shaft did not interfere with any of the pedals throughout their range of motion.

[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 07-07-2017).]