Car search help for a newbie team (Page 2 of 3)

Good luck with the build.

#5 should read...
5. Belts, kill switch, fire suppression system

If you don't know how to weld properly and in funny angles to get all welds done at a full 360 deg, I highly recommend finding a professional to do it all.

Other things to consider :
   defrosting front windshield - less of a problem if there is no glass at all in the car except from windshield or if you are keeping full dash and climate control system.
  make sure drivers door bars are setup to make ingress/egress as easy as possible.
  find a way to make electric fans run all the time (we also pull out the thermostat since it is a failure point)
  replace the brake light bulbs with new ones and keep old ones as backup.

True, a full suppression system is required, although in reference to the original wording there's nothing wrong with also having an extinguisher in the car.

Just so there's no misunderstanding, "all the time" still means that the fans have to be killed by the kill switch, along with every other component of the electrical system.

Over all you are on the right track and its clear you have done your homework! excited to see you succeed!

Sharing some of my experience - I hope it goes better for you!

I tacked in my cage from rollcagecomponents and sent it to a pro to get completed. The "pro" totally butchered it. I almost did not get to race because of it.

I tacked most of the cage in myself. For the experience, for the challenge, to make sure bars were put in the right place, and to save some money. I fully welded the top of the a pillar bar to the halo and the top of the halo to the main hoop before tacking to the spreader plates. I left the rocker bar, some of the door bars and x brace lose so the pro could 360 weld the main hoop and a pillar bars to the spreader plates before welding in the rest. Guess what the "pro" did? haphazardly started welding the easy to get to stuff without any plan to make everything 360. I had to cut out the door bars and convince a good friend to spend a few hours in some really tight spots to get it all welded. I think we are still friends?

If I ever have to go threw this again im vetting a really solid pro and paying them good money to do it all 100%. I'd make sure you lay your hands on a previously built cage from the pro and then spend a good 30 minutes reviewing the how not to fail tech to make sure they very clearly understand requirements. Also probably try to get some guarantee it will pass the "email a million pictures to john pagel" test or they fix it for free.

Ask a local team to inspect the cage. I've been doing this long enough, and built numerous cages, that I can spot potential problem points in a Lemons cage. The areas in question can be sent to Pagel if needed for approval.

Alright. Spent some time today with Dad starting on the interior.

All and all pretty clean and easy. We did have to saw of one of the seatbelt bolts, but other than that no big issues. We're up to a $1.37 in found change which we'll add into the budget. We also found one packet of smarties from the late 90s that we won't be using.

I've been wanting to mess around with Shopify for a while, so I decided to experiment with a pop-up Tempo parts site. I registered and set up FordTempoParts.com and started uploading each part, tagged with a part number, as it comes off the car. No idea if this will work. Probably not.

With everything out I'm starting to see how we'll probably build the roll cage. There is a little step where the base of the rear seat used to sit. I'm thinking if we can put the main hoop there, it will work really nicely as a rocker box. I'll weld the the main bars to the main hoop then move it on top of the seat support. This is pretty far back from the race seat, so I'll need a seat brace. Before I order for cage parts, I'll draw up what I'm thinking and send it John. He's gonna love me. 

Next step is to order a seat and adjustable rails so we can fit it and start measuring for the cage.

Got the seat mounted in the car today and I'm starting to think about how I'll put in the cage

For the main hoop, there is a ledge where the rear seat sat, it's pretty far behind the B pillar, but is just about 6 inches from the seat (we'll need a brace). It's very strong, rust free, and flat. Would be easy to weld in spreader plates. The other advantage is that it's elevated, so it should allow me to drop the main hoop to the floor, weld in the halo easily, then lift it back up.

The tempo has a very protruding dash, but I think we can just cut out a section of it (marked by the yellow lines). The only thing there is the headlight control and a vent, which we can move/delete.

From there I think we can run the down bars to the floor pretty easily, the floor there is pretty flat and strong. A dash bar might not be possible without something pretty bent / custom, but as I understand they aren't required.

For the backstays, there are a couple good places. The suspension towers or the trunk floor are both close to 45 degrees back and should be doable.

Planning on ordering a cage from roll cage components in the next few weeks. I went through the instructions and it seemed pretty straight forward. One thing I wasn't sure about was if they include some spacing from the roof or if I need to subtract a half inch to give us some buffer. I'll be sure to ask when I order.

I'd love you all to throw FUD on this plan if you can think of any.

Search this forum for: "plinth"

... and maybe start with this one:
https://forums.24hoursoflemons.com/view … 39#p336539

Cutting the dash ends like you proposed is perfect. After building somewhere in the teens of Lemons cars myself, I realized I REALLY like keeping the car street-legal with as much of the dash as possible. Nice to not have to figure out how to reattach all of the gauges, switches, radio and hvac controls. Just use the stock stuff that was designed for idiots in passenger cars to not die. you will likely find that on the driver's side there are some fuses or flashers or other electrical doodads on that end of the dash, so just unscrew the mounts if there are some, cut away, then reattach those doodads in that general area. It's also a good place to run the battery cutoff switch cables to a switch mounted right there by your left hand that can be reached by someone outside the car as well as the belted in driver. If I'm knocked out, I want whoever comes to rescue me to also hit the kill switch and pull the extinguisher. If it's right there by the A-pillar, it's a no-brainer.

I've faced similar dilemmas with the Hoop location. Sometimes I have put it up on the rear seat area, but lately much of the time I do sort of an inverted box in that corner (plate up the side and the back and vertical planes in that corner and put the spreader plate on the floor) often because right there under the seat bottom has been a fuel tank and fuel lines or the rear subframe so that when I inevitably catch the undercoating on fire while welding there, it is harder to put out or even notice in the first place. i can stuff something up in the vertical space on the underside of the car while welding the vertical plates to protect the tank /subframe bushings if I'm too stupid and lazy to remove it.

You're in a Tempo. This isn't going to be something that dialing in every ounce of perfection on will see you getting closer to an overall victory, so any weight savings or other perceived performance benefit you may be enticed to get by removing the dash and the hvac will be offset by the sheer pita removing all of that stuff will bring with having to then having to deal with all that remains.  Also, if you leave it and then at some later date you decide Hey, I'm going to go Ricky Racer on it now, you can remove it after the cage is in and while you're rewiring everything for your SuperMondoTurbo V16 powerplant.

Keep the dash like Spank said
Skin the driver side door like Yuck said.  You want the driver side door impact bars of the roll cage as far away from you as possible.  The other 3 dont really matter.  Keep the other 3, or skin them.  Either way.

Spank.  +1