Thread: B13 Rally Car Build

Got a guy coming over tomorrow eve to give me a quote on the cage welding. That's the biggest hurdle, the rest is mostly bolting parts back on/in.

Ok, cage welder lined up, will start happening this weekend. He also thinks he might be able to repair the damage on the Koyo radiator, which would be very cool.

Had the welder, my alignment guy, a fellow Nissan rally guy (FlatBlackIan from Nicoclub - NicoClub's 240SX Rally Car) and a couple of his buddies, plus my mom and mother-in-law over at the house during the course of the evening last night. Busy, to say the least. Pics will happen over the weekend as actual progress is made.

Massive step forward. Cage is 95% welded.











All the cage needs to be legal is the rear stays, and the feet welded down (cage is "loose" in the car at the moment to allow complete welds of the parts that were too close to the roof or sides of the car. If I can get the extra pieces cut by the time my welder comes back to finish up on Tuesday, I'll be adding an inverted V in the rear stays, bars from the feet of the main hoop to the rear stays and a lateral bar from the foot of each rear stay to the other.

Most of those bars just add chassis rigidity and help tie stresses from the suspension directly to the cage, reducing wear and stress on the unibody. The V in the rear stays is really the only safety upgrade in that list.

Gussets need to be added in the main hoop X as well as between the windscreen bar and the half-lateral bars.

You an also see one of the seat bases mocked into place in the passenger side. It needs some more work before it'll be ready to actually mount a seat, but I had to have it in place to get the placement of the harness bars right.

Cage looks great!

They guy who is doing the welding is amazing.


The cage was designed such that it could be partly welded, then the tack welds on the cage feet cut, and the whole cage moved back 4-5" to allow full welding of the intersections that would otherwise be inaccessible (like the base of the a-pillar/door jamb area). That was my design, and it worked really well, allowing us to get good, solid welds around the entire joint in each location.

But because I had fit the main hoop so tight to the body shell, in order to weld the sill bar to the main hoop, we had to take advantage of that, and he ran the torch though the top opening in the body under the rear window, and back out the bottom one, and welded the joint blind. Came out fantastic.

Funny thing. The welds on the junction of all the bars at the base of the A-pillar are textbook perfect welds. Beautiful overlapping circles. And you can't seven see them without a mirror or a scope, because they're hidden by the body once the cage is slid back into position.

32 tube junctions welded so far. 8 left to a compliant cage (plus 4 gussets).

Tonight I prep the final pieces for welding. Tues we finish the welding. Wed-Fri I wrap up the suspension on all four corners. Over the weekend I get my logbook for the car and put the engine bay back together. Next week the interior goes back together and then it goes for an alignment. Couple of days to wrap up any loose ends and then off to MI to race. Tough schedule, but it can be done.

Love seeing it all come together. Keep up the great work!

Mike

Last night was prep for finishing the cage tonight. Didn't get as far as I had hoped (things slowed down after the second beer, I'm a cheap date these days). I'll have to move to get a few pieces shaped up while the ones I did last night are welded on.

Back half of the cage nearly complete just awaiting final welding this evening):




"Nismo" short shifter and basic shift knob installed.



Engine bay is also going bock together, but I didn't take pics.

Glad to see you boxed off at least that bottom portion. It was screaming for it and that's nice to see it done. I didn't want to saying anything about it, and I guess I didn't have to.

Ben, rally roll cage are required to be gussetted anywhere two bars make an X. FIA specifies "taco style" gussetts like this.

Mark, are your main hoop to "over door bar" gussets legal? They look pretty far away from the top. I don't remember if the rule is distance (like less than 6 inches) or if the rule is "don't block egress". I'm sure you've checked, but I got hassled about that on my cage.