cup to lemon (Page 1 of 4)

First sentence in section 2.1 of the rules will probably pose a problem for you:

Vehicle Eligibility: Entry limited to mass-produced, four-wheeled vehicles legal for US highway use at the time of their manufacture.

and suspension...

Whatever it is, it has to be a road worthy, mass produced, titled vehicle at one time.

Tube frame, no go.

I'm new so .....

Tube chassis are scratch built frames made from "tubing" and are not allowed in Lemons. Factory suspension components connected by custom made ladder-type frame rails are allowed?

I have to ask on the frame issue because I'm a huge fan of the Model T GT. Have you seen the Hot Rod magazine pics of the T? They custom hand made a frame for that car.

MTGT is a Model A frame grafted to a tube-frame safety cell. or vice versa.
The whole model A frame is there. Bodywork is mix 'n match to fit where it does.

while kinda intrinsically racey 'cause when you build said safety cell you have unlimited potential for suspension sub-assemblies and p/u point geometry changes, it's legal.

~they used out-of-the-wrecking yard parts for said suspension, with some thought to locations, restricted by lengths and location on the Model A frame.

(I think it's a Pinto/Mustang II front cross member and something like a Ranger rear axle? the engine that was formerly in DeathCab, A T-5WC out of so many trashed boxes spares they keep breaking - but all Found On Road Dead parts, true to form)

I think it is wrong to call it a Model "T" though - it is a Model "A" frame, a whole different animal and I don't care if you put a lunar lander on top of it, what the tires attach to started out as Model "A". Sort of...
Call it a Rangy Model A Pinto Tee Truck...

They ~said~ it was a model A frame, it looked like one when they were putting a cage on top of it (and a mile of "other" tubing)
- I guess I need to look at the article, see if they cut the A frame out from under the tubing and perhaps respect them less...

The hot rod article kinda mixed up the facts. It is a Model A frame. We have ANOTHER model A frame (actually a AA truck frame) that we use as a frame jig. We made several modifications to the rails, including Z'ing the front to stub the Pinto clip on.
The front clip is pinto, and the rear is Fox body Mustang. It's titled and registered as a Model T, because the body and pick-up bed are both 27 Model T. The other 27 Model T I drove was built using Model A rails as well. Still titled as a T. The VIN verifier (yes, it has a real VIN) looks at the vin, looks at rhe car and says, yes it's a 27 T, and that vin is attached. There is no such thing as VIN decoding on frames that old.

And, the "mile" of other tubing is all part of the cage. It needed to be reinforced tip to tail, and have. Nerf bars added in order to meet safety requirements. The nerf bars, fenders, bumpers, front crash protection, etc. were all added so it would comply with safety rules. The last thing a hot rodder wants to do is add more metal. Kinda defeats the idea of building a light-weight car. It would look much better and be much lighter with less tubing... It just wouldn't be safe enough to race.

Yep - what I saw, an A frame sandwiched in there somewhere.
Not entirely what Spank's doing with the Mokiat, but on a similar track

(He should tube-frame reinforce that beast!)

I know the body number is attached to the cowl in most of the early car crowd, and that that is what "everybody has done for years" but...
IMHO I feel that it's more like a motorcycle where it's the frame that makes the VIN and you can call the body whatever you want... Call someone's Harley creation an S&S, or a 'rumph, or a... 'cause that's the tank, engine, or whatever and they'll just shrug and think you aren't a biker. For bikes I guess the classic racing/club-bike example is Rickman.
and in my old sports-car brain we call them things like "Devon bodied Corvette" or "Pininfarina Ferrari" or such... So I still feel you are T-bodied A

~shrugs~ Different backgrounds I guess

This is as far as I went with the moke.

And the only reason I did that was because there was no structure left to the unibody box sections-- the floor was gone, the bottom of the side pontoons was gone, the heelboard was gone... So nothing to weld the cage legs to. I tried to use my interpretation of some sanctioning bodies that limits the number of cage "points" and restrict cage elements to within the suspension pickup points. Essentially, I just built a LeMons-legal cage, put a 2" box frame beneath it to weld the cage to, and then used that box section "frame" to link the front and rear subframes together.  I wanted to stay within what I thought the spirit of the Lemons rules (and my ability levels). The subframes are still free to flex and twist independently and nothing about what I've built reinforces any suspension component.-- I mean, we had the rusty rear subframe give way at Buttonwillow and it ended our run and we had to patch it back together to get back on track. Sure, I coulda built it so I could run without a rear subframe from the get-go and incorporated extra rollcage tubing and pickup points, but again, I didn't want to stray away from it's inherently crappy moke-ness.

In hindsight, I could've probably built a kick-butt tubechassis buggy ala Ariel Atom and hung some moke panels on it.