Heres some pictures of my shiny fantabulous new cage that Nick from Rickson motorsport has made me :D He used to work for Gartrack who do World Rally Cross cars so is very experienced. If anyone wants contact details then give me a mail at david at dmonaghan dot co dot uk.
I\'m fully stoked with the workmanship and how good it was dealing with him. He gave me quotes for all the different options before hand and we decided on a T45 cage with door bars, harness bars and some extra cross bars. As I wanted the extra bars the t45 made sense as despite it being almost double the price in materials its much lighter and a lot stronger than normal CDS.
Nick called me up everytime anything needed changing from the original design to make sure it was ok with me.
Last year I didn\'t really care about the car and just wanted to drive as often as I could to learn some skills. This season I\'m making a big effort to have a well maintained car to look good for the sponsors and BDC.
I\'ve gone full tilt on the safety equipment after being a passenger in a crash and really wishing the guy had a full cage! The thought of rolling without a good cage at 100mph is not appealing and I dont think the majority of bolt in cages are up to the job.
After a rushed couple of evenings stripping the car I finally got it down to Nicks workshop.
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0666.jpg)
Proper plates are essential so in the event of a roll the cage doesn\'t punch through the floor and take your head off. Nicks welding is amazing. One day I want to be able to do this stuff! Main hoop plates and box being built up:
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0702.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0703.jpg)
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(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0669.jpg)
Some more detail of the main hoop plates being made up
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0707.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0708.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0709.jpg)
Building up around the rear suspension turret
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0670.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0671.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0672.jpg)
Nicks incredible pipe bending. I\'ve never seen it done this well. The bends are so good that the cage can be welded to the chassis rather than the usual gusseting that you see on mass produced or poorly bended cages.
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0673.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0674.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0675.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0676.jpg)
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(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0679.jpg)
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(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0681.jpg)
Starting to come together now, main hoop joined up to the rear turrets.
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0682.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0683.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0684.jpg)
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(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0686.jpg)
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(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0688.jpg)
I love seeing how all this stuff is done. Main hoop junction.
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0689.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0690.jpg)
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(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0692.jpg)
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(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0694.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0695.jpg)
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(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0697.jpg)
I asked for some extra bars in this area to strengthen the structure up. Rear cross bars and lower bar joining to the hoop and into the door bars.
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0701.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0698.jpg)
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(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0700.jpg)
To work on the cage you drop it through the floor and then build it up. I\'m not sure of the exact sequence but here you can see that happening.
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0705.jpg)
Nearly there now :D Double door bars for maximum awesomeness and to make it impossible to get in and out of the car without advanced yoga moves.
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0710.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0712.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0713.jpg)
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(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0715.jpg)
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0716.jpg)
Rear cross bars shot
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a261/monaghanroyal/PICT0711.jpg)
Wow! Simply Wow!
Gartrack are very good...Bill did the cage on my old Atom, and his welding was truly amazing!
Going T45 makes very little difference on the spec of the cage, unless you are going to pay the £1800 fee to get Mira to crash test the car, and thats asuming you have the CAD drawings. To avoid this fee, you need to keep the tube sizes the same as the blue book, which from the looks of it, you have done. So you arent really taking full advantage of the T45 as that would allow you to run a thinner tube.
The bends look good. :)
Out of interest how much was the cage?
that looks really good royal, ive always fancied getting a roll cage but im a lazy bugger dont think i could be bothered to climb over the door bars every timei wanna get in and out the car lol also insurance companies dont tend to like roll cages
Yeah, I couldn\'t run thinner tube because the drift regs don\'t recognise that t45 is stronger and can be thinner diameter.
You might be able to elaborate on this but I don\'t think MSA/FIA regs do either? The new rules say you need to homologate (is that the word? get test results from MIRA) and certify to destruction but in reality it seems most scrutineers dont actually push for it if they can see its a very high quality cage and they know the maker. Once its painted they can\'t really tell if its t45 so I decided not to take any chances and do it at the full diameters. It will only be stronger anyhow so not a big issue. The cage is bent so well that its welded into the chassis so its less in the way than a bolt in thats gusseted away from the chassis.
I\'m a bit wary of upsetting the forum admins and traders like yourself by advertising for him on here so dont want to talk about prices. I just wanted to show everyone the work and build up a project thread, but feel free to email me if you want any info he\'s very open with prices no no problem.
Because he\'s just starting out on his own (still on good terms with gartrack incidently) he\'ll do a full welded in cage to regs for a price that competes with that of the mass produced bolt in ones that you buy from fabricage or whatever. He\'s made jigs from my cage now so he can do future ones quicker and cheaper.
Royal me old mucka - quick question... does this cage have to be \'tagged\'... in much the same way that they are for drag racing...
Phil
Not sure what you mean mate so probably not!! Do you mean to prove homologation/MSA and that stuff?
They try to keep the BDC regs so the series is open to grass roots competitors without company backing. I asked Nick to build it to BDC/EDC specs and to blue book specs but I wasn\'t bothered about having to jump through hoops for it, more just for piece of mind and possibility of entering other series if they weren\'t super strict on bits of paper.
Yeah bit like that matey...... In order to race in drag racing events to MSA standards, the cage must be inspected and tagged according to the speed of the car....
Quote from: royal;586985Not sure what you mean mate so probably not!! Do you mean to prove homologation/MSA and that stuff?
They try to keep the BDC regs so the series is open to grass roots competitors without company backing. I asked Nick to build it to BDC/EDC specs and to blue book specs but I wasn\'t bothered about having to jump through hoops for it, more just for piece of mind and possibility of entering other series if they weren\'t super strict on bits of paper.
Ah right. From what I can find out you used to be able to just build cages to \'blue book\' regs and they\'d only need homologating if you deviated from those standards. It seems they\'ve changed the rules this year and to get official certification all builders have to send a cage to MIRA for destruction along with the obvious costs. It seems that most series are sympathetic to the costs and will make a judgement on the quality of the cage rather than the piece of paper. I wouldn\'t want to be quoted on this though as its only from talking to different people and its not an issue for me and the series I\'m competing in.
Scrutineers have to run against the blue book, or FIA standards.
So if you look through the Blue book, or against the FIA regs posted they stipulate the size of key bars that need to be run within the car. If you stick to this you can build a cage yourself. Ideally you need a competent welder, and we certainly wouldn\'t certify a cage unless the welder is coded or can actually prove they can weld, but as long as you stick to the rules above....your cage will comply.
If you want to go the otherway...then you put the cage in a CAD package such as Solidworks and test the cage in a roll over situation as well as other crashes...you can then put in different bars change the widths and utilise the benefits of T45, which yes you are...but it will be overkill. And I imagine you\'ve paid a good deal for it too. Once you are happy you have saved the 20kgs, you then post the drawings to Mira and they will give you a certificate to say it complies, homologation, and this you then present to the scrutineers on the day.
Id be interested to see how it compares in price to our cages. :)
Cool, thanks for the detail there. BDC/EDC wont let you run thinner bars even if you did get it homologated. They base their regs on them but not FIA/MSA par se.
I wanted to get the cage done to a high spec so I could enter things like Nippon Challenge if it was a possibility but the drifting is my priority.