Topic: Crushed or Stretched Bends Assessment
Background: Purchased car that previously ran Lemons in 2012. Cage was built by previous owner.
Upon myself running through the tech sheet rather stringently, I found the some questions when evaluating the qualitative part on crushed, stretched, and crimped bends. After scanning the forums I have seen some mixed opinions so figure I would post it up here. The cage appears it may have "crushed"/"stretched" bends on the inner radius where the diameter does "neck down" some, but are nowhere near as bad as those depicted in the "How not to fail Lemons Tech" guide or the "Common Tech Failures" thread. If there is any deformation to the outer radius it is barely visible.
Appreciate people's opinions on if this would or would not pass tech. I'm trying to be realistic here as to what is acceptable--from what I have read, the only way to prevent any deformation is a "real" mandrel bend which most shops do not even have the tools for. I would really rather not rip this out and spend $2K on a new cage--is there anything else that I can do, if needed, such as adding gussets to support the overall structure?
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More photos at link below, but apparently I can't post links without enough posts.
imgur dot com /a/E3ZDm