Raising the bar. — Apex Attack

Ok, let's keep up those irregularly timed posts.

Remember my big tease about building a rollbar?

Ever since I crashed my old SW20, I knew I needed a rollbar. Not a full cage, those are pretty stupid for any kind of street driving (no helmet + fender bender = brain damage), but just a simple rollbar. I also wanted to build it myself. I'm a state certified SMAW welder (stick welding), why not see what I can do with a lil squirt gun MIG machine. (a review of my machine if you're shopping)

So, after a bit of research, it came down to two options.

1. Buy all my own material and bend/build my own from scratch.

2. Autopower U-weld it.

I was leaning towards the Autopower kit, since I didn't want to buy a big piece of tubing at $7 a foot, and kink it my first bend attempt.

Then, some late night research revealed a new option. Rhoades racing. (http://www.rhodesracecars.com/) A random JEGS.com search showed up a kit from them for an astonishing $179. Too good to be true, right?

Yeah, right. That was for the basic rollbar, in the worst material offered, mild steel tubing, and without the $100 shipping fee. Still, it got the ball rolling. I checked out their site, they offer lots of chassis fabrication parts at very affordable prices. After some chumpcar/lemons forum browsing I saw quite a few teams using their cage kits to build their own, with to-be-expected-for-the-price results. Yeah, some bars need to be trimmed and re-notched. But the important pre-bent pieces all fit pretty well. That was all I needed to hear since that was what I was worried about.

I gave them $500 of my credit card limit, and a week later this showed up.

While searching their site, I noticed none of their kits had the ever important diagonal cross bar needed by pretty much every sanctioning race body. Not a big deal, buy some additional tubing and build my own... Then, I realized for $20 more from the low price of $379, I could get a 6 point cage (which included more tubing to make my own diagonal). THEN I realized the 8 point cage was THE SAME PRICE. So, for $399 I picked up the DOM material 8 point cage, plus $100 shipping, voila.

To be noted. I went for the DOM tubing after a bit of research. It's a much more consistent material in thickness over mild steel tubing, and is required by most racing organizations (I used SCCA and NASA as guidelines). I'm not building my bar for any specific kind of racing (rollbars aren't legal for any wheel to wheel racing anyways), but it's good to follow their guidelines...they probably know more about these things than I do.

So, time to get busy rippin and tearin the interior apart. Let's test the main hoop fitment.

Although the upper part of the hoop fit pretty well, it was bent past 180 degrees overall... so the lower posts didn't hit the frame rail I want to weld to (thicker steel, integral part of the chassis). I figured I could wedge what was supposed to be the harness bar in there, it would spread it out... and it did! So I pulled everything and started prepping the lower frame rails with some 1/8" thick steel plates (supplied in the kit).

The plates tacked up to the frame rails. I'm no safety guru, and apparently everyone else on the internet is, and I'm following some pretty tried and true rollbar rules here. You DO NOT want to weld the end fo the bar directly onto the framerail... it could easily rip out the welds in a rollover, you want to spread the load as much as possible. Hence the plates.

Mostly welded in, joining together a bunch of 1-1/2" welds so as to not get the thin sheet metal too hot and burn through. This is NOT weld porn, it's a freaking mig weld. I'm new to it, and learning as I go. I have good confidence in the welds being structurally sound. If you want to call all the welds hammered dogshit, go right ahead, but please do in a constructive way so we can all learn a thing or two!

After that we needed to fit the main hoop to figure out and cut it to height (it comes way taller than the car interior, you cut to fit). I wanted a tight fitment... so I decided my hacked up car needed a bit more hacking.

Slice and dice. Now we can cut and fit the main hoop closer.

Using the harness bar as a spreader, I was able to get the hoop in and tacked up where I wanted it, on the frame rails. Now I can remove the harness bar and start cutting up some of the other bars to make the rollbar how I really wanted it.

For my design I mostly copied Alex Wilhelm (linky) and Eric Hux on their builds for the basic design... changing slightly as I went to accommodate my fitment. Thanks for the help guys!

The bar would tie in at four points, have a one-piece diagonal bar, and a two piece harness bar. Simple, right?

Well, for the most part it really was. But, it was also very time consuming. I was using a pre-cut and notched kit, but basically changing all the parts they were cut and notched for. Hand notching with a grinder is also a bit tougher to do than I thought. As always, proper weld joint preparation makes it MUCH easier to put in a good weld bead.

For the upper backer plates, I built these.

Hand cut and bent in my vise with a hammer. They turned out decent. As you can see in the above picture, I first tried to weld them to the firewall. That turned into a mess. Literally.

The OEM firewall is actually two very thin pieces of sheet metal, with a layer of sound deadening tar sandwiched between. Even on my lowest setting, I was blowing right through the first layer of sheet metal and melting the tar. After PMing Eric Hux about his rollbar, I realized he built a backer plate for the engine bay side of the firewall and bolted that support through. Theoretically, that should be even stronger than welding to the one layer. So, I ground out what I could of that weld and figured I could build another batch of those plates and bolt through.

Looking pretty boss through a filthy car. At the end of a long Saturday, I just needed to finish the last upper support piece.

So, early the next day I had the main rollbar all tacked together. Time to bust the lower tacks and take it out for final welding!

Unfortunately, safety is heavy. The whole bar probably weighs 35 pounds or so. It's worth it if I ever need it. Hopefully I can save that weight elsewhere.

Ok, time to weld this sucker up. I fit up a couple of practice joints, watched a bunch of youtubes, said a prayer, and got started.

Hey, not too bad eh? I seemed to be getting pretty good penetration and adhesion on both sides. I did battle some undercut due to my Noob-ness with a mig gun. It was fixable with another pass if needed.

After awhile I did get get some porosity from a partially clogged tip not sending the gas out like it should.

Grind it out, fill it back in.

Like I said, it's definitely not weld-porn, but I've seen much worse and I'm confidant in the strength of the weld.

After it was all welded, I cleaned it all up, scuffed it, and gave it some paint.

What's out motto here at Apex Attack? Say it with me out loud, "Powdercoat dreams on a spraypaint budget." A ton of forums said they had great durability and looks using rustoleum "Hammered" finish brush-on paint. Well, my local stores only had that in spray paint... so I gave it a shot. It looks awesome...but not that durable. Lots of "character" scratches already.

While I waited for the paint on the bar to dry, I cleaned up and re-painted the interior gloss black. It' was getting pretty worn out over the last two years of hard driving. Time to weld the bar in permanently!

Some of my gaps needed a couple passes to fill completely, but overall good results. You can see the holes for bolting through to the plates I built for the engine bay side.

Painting the attachment points one welded in. Yes, the paint already scratched on the harness bar.

Fitting the interior back in wasn't too bad... EXCEPT, the stupid rear quarter window trim pieces. I couldn't believe I got those things to taco in half without cracking to fit where they needed to go. I had to cut the rear window lower trim in half and install in two pieces, but overall looks pretty decent. Using a hole saw, I notched out the lower trim pieces. They fit much easier.

Camera flash makin' my interior look like space.

Using the Schroth youtube, they gave me some great instructions to wrap my harness onto the bar. Really like how this turned out.

With the interior all buttoned up, the rollbar was done! I learned a TON, and I know the next one I build will fit better, have better welds, and take less time.

BUT WAIT, RacerX hooked up another fat care package!

This time, they wanted me to try out their new shift surround kit, sure! (Shift Kit Link) Check out that dope USB card, shaped and laser etched like a car key.

Only took about 30 minutes to install, really digging the weight of the new knob, and overall appearance.

Diggin the new interior now, thanks RacerX!

So, we had a track day coming quick. And I still had a big to-do list.

I breezed through a lot of the little things, cleaning the car up, small chores here and there. One big one left was to figure out my rear view camera. It used to be mounted between the tail lights... but that was now all mesh for the intercooler air to leave the trunk.

After thinking about a good spot to place it for a couple of nights... I jsut went with the obvious, right in the middle.

Works perfectly there. Dang, what a sick bumper sticker on the dash, buy it HERE.

After a proper oil change, we were mostly ready for the first track day of the year. Lots of changes to the engine setup, but not many to the chassis. So I'm sure lots will go wrong.

Stay tuned, I'm releasing a bunch of cool blog updates over the next two weeks (like 3-5!).