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Finally got the tube notcher!! Yay. JD2 Notchmaster. It really makes doing the tubing a piece of cake. It even worked on the square tube and being able to offset worked nice for putting the top rails flush with the outer edge of the frame where they attached to the cage. I got a couple of fine tooth hole saws from Medford Tools and they really work slick no grabbing or chattering. Still no sign of wear other than the paint so they hold up well. A little pricey at $9.95 but hold up well and work great.

Got the top bracing tacked in on the cage but need to figure out where the steering column goes and the seat bell harness height to finish main part. The shiny isn't a gap in the top tacked pic it's a bevel on the edges.

Still had some time left today so fitted the top rails.

Well first some undoing . I didn't like how the top rail lined up with the rear front upright so off it came and moved it in at the front. Got the top rail and uprights for the firewall in and some more bracing in on the cage. Ran out of dom so no more cage work till thursday.

Tried fitting the engine to check clearances and everything looks good no problem on fitting a bigger intake plenum and larger throttle body and and plenty of turbo room. When the C crosstube gets cut I think I can go back a little bit further with the engine.
The wide top seat will fit 2 wide without contact. Might switch to sparco instead of kirkey now that I know I have room. 11 1/2 inches of pedal room to the inside edge of tubes so my big feet should have enough room. Ordered the bigger oil pan so I can see how creative I need to get on the lower bracing. It's not any lower but at least 2 1/2 times wider.





Sorry JD couldn't resist.

Nope, I wasn't there... The weld is too damned purty to be one of mine!

If these 115 degree in the garage days continue I might be sweating my way down to a smaller seat.

Got the bracing for the sides of the cockpit all done and the rear cross brace for the back of the cage in and put the base of the tunnel in.

Gave up on a steering quicker and just getting a 3 turn rack and if it's not fast enough I have bolt on arms for steering so I can just make some shorter ones to speed it up.

Got my new oil pan so I can work on the lower engine bay bracing now.
Oil pan holds 1 more quart, same height and has fins for cooling, a extra plug hole for temp sensor and swinging doors to keep it at the pickup. Along with a accusump it should be a pretty good bandaid for not having a dry sump.

Got my Tbird uprights so can design the rear now.

For a second I thought I was looking at pics of my build ...
Nice start, GLWYB!

Moti

Nice job on the tube fit-ups!

Seeing what looks to be essentially a full cage, I had to look back at your first post to see if you planned to go racing. My concern is that wile your cage looks well built, it doesn't really look to comply with the typical SCCA or NASA requirements for a racing legal cage. As long as you're just thinking track days and AutoX your set-up will probably pass tech without issue. Nice fabrication.

Man over 900 views. Didn't know I looked at it that many times.

Blackbird
Thanks. The resemblance in the cage shows huh? I'm running a few more degrees in the front hoop and a few less in the rear.

Erioshi
Yeah mainly street ,autocross, and trackday at first. Didn't really want to run the forward bars to make it scca legal not even sure where to run them. As far as nasa as far as I understood 1 more door bar and the rear legs are all thats missing and there on there way just not made yet. Or I'm missing what? Not sure what class it would fit in as I might go aero and non aero st1 would have to turn the boost down to 4 or less to make the HP weight ratio right.

Well I thought I'd have it ready to final weld the frame today but the bandsaw blade had other ideas. I think I have about all the cross bracing I can fit in the sides. About 5 more pieces and other spots that need finish welded will be getting in the way.
About the welding I made this post.Help me decide

Off to Sin City Tuesday for the rest of the week so not much else the rest of the week.

For NASA ST (either 1 or 2) would probably be the best fit for a locost / seven clone; as you had figured out.

The cage stuff can be a bit tricky; what might fly with one tech inspector may not fly with another if there's much deviation from the written letter of the rules. What caught my attention (aside from the rear support bars as you had mentioned) was that the rear hoop diagonal support doesn't extend all the way to the floor. You may want to check out the current NASA CCR and verify your design with someone from tech in your region if you're strongly considering racing the car; it would probably be easier to make changes to the cage now, before there's an entire car built around it.

Like I said, very nice job on the fab work; I can only hope my car ends up looking this well built.

Not to much to report. Started welding up the chassis. About 1/2 way with the cage and 1/4 of the frame. So far so good still sits flat on the table.
Gotta start welding in the evening when its cooler or something. Sweating so much can't see out of the hood and everywhere I rest my arm or lean against it I'm getting the frame wet and starting to rust it. O'well I'm having fun.
On to the see I'm welding pics.

nice build - I'm always impressed to see ppl do this from a "pile of tubes", especially when the quality looks spot on (I build mine from a kit ).

The low profile oil pan looks great - almost looks too thin...is this for a dry sump?

Nice looking welds.

Nope no dry sump cept in my dreams. If you back up a couple pics you can see the stock pan below the orange silicone it's tiny. Sr20det only holds 3.5 quarts stock. This pan adds 1 quart then with a remote bigger oil filter, cooler and accusump ought to get it up to a decent amount and keep the temps down.



Haha finally got a good looking one and thought I better get a pic of it for posterity

I really need to update . Maybe tomorrow I'll have time. Anyway where I'm at right now ready to build the back of frame but can't decide on fuel tank setup. Use a fuel safe cell which would be much safer but really raise the CG with it mounted over the diff and no chance of storage, or use a tall skinny non bladder tank and mount it low behind the suspension and loop a cage bar around it. O'yeah and the major price difference although the price isn't really the deciding factor. I'm open to opinions or suggestions.