Rhodes Race Cars

Hey what's up, Rose? Even though it's been a little bit since I finished the cage in t So let's go. Music Okay, so I should probably start t I don't pretend to be a fabricator. I'm not a welder. I don't pretend to be. But I did do the whole cage myself, the whole Rhodes Race Car cage myself. I t Maybe we could start with what tools you need. Okay, tools. Step one, you're going to need a welder. I TIG welded everyt T I've had it for a couple years. I love it. I t I'm super impressed with it. I've never had a single problem with it. But you don't have to have a TIG welder. You can make weld a cage in. I bought a TIG because I knew I was going to do car stuff that I wanted to be able to do, stainless and al The other t Specifically, you need a tubing voucher. So I bought t It actually worked super well for me. It can really only do one degree of angle. So if you've got a tube in there, you can't do a compound angle into a tube. I'm sure there's tubing, not sure it's out there that can do that. Maybe there's not. Maybe that's not a t Maybe somebody should get on that and make that. So you'll see in t But as far as 90% of the notches you're going to put into a tube, that t I bolted it to the bench. And then t And then I went to Harbor Freight and I bought one of their mid-grade corded drills because I'm not going to burn out my Milwaukee. I'm going to buy there was a couple of times I wasn't quite sure, but it made it through it. So that's another t A drill. Second t I've got that doesn't work as good. T Home Depot. $30-40. It is a digital angle finder. You can zero it. You can hold the angle. T Especially when you go to notch your tubes because you're going to really want to make sure that your tube is actually in there square first. So check it with that. Check it to the spindle of the actual, with the hole saws attached to it. Make sure you had a perfect 90. That the other thing, a small level even Hello. Making a video. Okay. The wife. The other thing you're going to need is a level T Came in handy as well, but there had to be somet I got other assorted big levels. Those helped too. That's pretty much it. That's the majority of the tools you really need. And hole saws. You'll need a couple different hole saws. Otherwise you'll be set. Okay. Let's get into putting t So when you look at they're typically all longer than you need because you're going to cut them down. You're going to match them to fit how you want it. At least t Let's prefix t If you bought a team Z cage, let'say team Z for example, it's probably three times the amount of money. And you could probably just put it in there. You wouldn't need a single one of those tools except for the welder. And you could put it in there, hold it, weld it. You'd be happy as a lark. I didn't want to go that route. One, because I wanted to try to save a little bit of money. And two, maybe it's a pride t I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. Even though I didn't. I don't have the tubing bender to actually bend the tubes and make it from scratch. But I thought, it can't be that bad. I'm going to, I have the time. I'm going to save a little bit of money. I'm going to try to do t And then it will be the way that I want it to be. Looking back on it, if I did it again, I might spend the money because it did take me a fair amount of time. It was probably worth it in time, but I can't say that for sure because I've never had a team Z one. So let's look at t So looking at the only bar I didn't add was from here down to the middle where you tie that into your trans tunnel for either side. I didn't do that yet because the other way you tie it in is going down. Typically you go from the node, you tie down into here on the floor where you'd have through frame subframe connectors. I don't have those yet. And I'm torn on whether I'm going to get them. So in a typical cage kit, they send you a bunch of these. I don't know if you can see it. Send you a bunch of these plates. NHRA says you need a 6x6 plate. That is at least a 1u20448 t It needs to be welded all the way around. And that tube needs to be welded all the way to it, all the way around the tube for it to cert. The other t I then go to the bolt route. I went to welding route. So I welded these plates. But the first t Let me get some better lighting. Okay, so I'm back. So what you're going to find with t So my original plan was I'm going to take t I am going to put it on t Spoiler alert. In a car There's not They are shaped oddly. They have been formed in a way to try to give them rigidity. It is a little bit of a nightmare. So I was going to put t Real b So what I ended up doing is I ordered, I went to S The certain amount of 6 inch by 6 inch, 8 inch t I bought those and I took the original plate kit and I made these side plates and I traced out the floor and I made them form fit to the floor. And then I ticked t And t One is that I'm almost positive that t You can cert t It does not have to be a 6 inch plate right to the floor. T It's all boxed in. The other t So what I did is I just tacked t All of the actual cage structure, all of it all tacked up on these boxes. And then when it came time to weld the top, You've got a 6 inch air gap between the headliner and the top of the cage so you can actually weld the top. The front was flat enough in enough room that I was actually able to show you. As you can see, I used a standard plate up there on both sides. I took a hole saw and I just put a hole saw right through the floor so the cage could drop all the way down through the floor. That is vital when it comes to welding all of the top joints. Before I did any of that, the car right now as it sits is clearly not level. T I got it jacked up But before I started doing any fabricating at all, it was an inc Making sure everyt The car is level, the car is square. That way, when you put a bar in there and you go, okay, the bar is square, well I know it'square to the car now because the car is completely square. So because I had the boxes in there, I ended up taking t I also cut it in angle. That tipped my main hoop back to actually run along with the B-pillar. To me, that just looks better. It looks sleeker, it blends in. Because of that, up in here, you can see where I have the main hoop tied in. T In the Rhodes Racecar, they give you t We're going from the main hoop all the way around the winds That's one way to do it. And then they've got t And I worked really hard to get the fitment here so you can't fit your finger through it. It is as tight to the headliners I could get it. What I learned in team Z, and at first I didn't understand why. I'm Team Z runs a bar that goes all the way down to the floor and it comes back and it comes all the way back to the main hoop. And the reason why is because coping t It's awful because it's I spent legitimately to cope t It took me probably, I would honestly say a t It was terrible. In order to do that, I did find t With that you can get into the corner and kind of grind out good smooth radiuses. So after I had that top bolt coped out, everyt It was honestly, I'm happy with the cage. I'm super happy with how it turned out. If I were you, I would look for a cage that has that continuous bar design. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look up the Team Z one. They definitely have that design. And you should be able to get the other t If you're TIG welding t I had to bust out the flexible tungsten. This allows you to just When you do that, it allows you to kind of get it outside the cup a little bit. You still have to be in the gas, But it gets it where when you're a tight spot where you can'tip the torch, you've got your tungsten bending just a tiny bit. And that really helped me out. Trying to t And I see with And only cutting when You're going to be in some awkward spots welding. I made this is an aftermarket motion race works col Obviously you can see the dash bar. I do have the skeleton of the dash, but none of the mounting points or anyt T I'd say kind of a full blown race car if you will now. Still have a charging system cooling system. So to me, it's not that much of a race car. But yeah, I t And it'll be what you want. It just takes that takes a little bit more time, a little bit more patience. And I'd be happy to answer any questions you have regarding cage install or, I'm not a fabricator, but I was able to struggle through it myself. And I t You can even see, I don't know if you'll see it, And the door is just It's just So that's pretty much it. And then after that, after I got the cage in, well, it was kind of well, I was in the process of putting the cage in is I drilled the holes to the Scott rod bulkhead slid down. So it was kind of on there. And then I finished her off. So The other t What condition it's in. And actually the car, I t I want to make an update video kind of highlighting all the changes we've been through multiple iterations already, And I think But I kind of took a break from making videos on that car just because I wanted to make it work. And I thought that As opposed to watc I know there'somet So that video is hopefully coming before the end before winter that video hopefully is coming and then hopefully into next year it will be race ready and it will be. It'll be quick. So that's the whole. So I appreciate Shoot me a comment if you got any questions. Thank you.