A Network of Tubes

Our cage install went pretty well. One bit of panic came early. We had tacked the main hoop, halo and front down tubes in place and thought "Gee, if we shift the whole thing forward we'll have better access to the welds". So we did. The panic came when we went to shift it back and saw that the final welds had warped the frame by about 8". Much grunting and pushing followed. Trevor and I eventually persuaded the cage into position using a Hi-Lift jack and a piece of spare tubing. We even still have all of our fingers!

A few more evenings of measuring, cutting and welding got the rest of the tubes in place.

Lucky Cage

Once we started measuring for a custom cage we realized that our measurements were coming out pretty close to what the S&W CRX cage would be. We had initially assumed that the main hoop would sit in the rear passenger footwell and that the S&W cage would be too short. The big Ah-Ha came when we pushed the main hoop back far enough that it sat on the rear seat. This is what the S&W cage was built to do, so it looks like it will fit pretty close.

We traced the design on a cardboard mockup and test fit it to the car. Looks like it will fit up fine.

The extra nice side is that the cage is cheaper than I thought. It's built out of .134 EWS rather than .120 DOM, so it costs about half as much.