The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Lemons Newcomers → Minimum interior to remove for roll cage?
Say I want to keep the interior somewhat nice on my Lemons car. For a cage, I expect I will need to remove the headliner and the carpet. And probably the trim on the A, B, and C pillars. What are the other things that you *must* strip out of the interior to accommodate a cage?
You're gonna want to remove the dash,so you can get the cage nice and tight to the A pillars.After the cage is in,you can trim the dash to fit and reinstall it if you are so inclined......
Many here will suggest:
Mount the seat before planning the cage.
Safety, clearance, visibility, comfort; most important: exiting the vehicle in an emergency.
There's a guy near me who builds cages for '60s, '70s drag race cars, and he does retained interior cages; he's extremely particular. He cuts out a lot of other people's work. And gets a lot of repeat business and referrals from current and past customers.
My interiors will be stripped, with the exception of the defroster function.
get a Sawzall and remove as much as possible. The car should be almost a shell. weight is a killer on the track.
You save a lot of weight fully stripping it. Maybe you have more hp than us lol, but less weight handles better too. Not specifically called out on the rules iirc but stripping the interior 100% also removes a lot if flammable material as well.
I saw a cage with a full dash ...but why. If you read "how not to fail" they have some not required but recommend cage components, one of these is a crossbar by the dash iirc. We tried to add as many recommend cage bits as we could to make judges happy at tech
Good luck doing this bar with a dash lol
Also not a must but it's more comfortable if your door bars bow out, this requires removing door panels at a minimum.
There have been some IOE cars that have been minimally stripped. Some have been de-caged and then sold after a race.
If you give a little bit more information, maybe we can help you better.
Thanks for all the advice! For context, I am going for more of an "IOE" build than a "fast lap" build. I've got a weird vehicle that I am hoping to use in Lemons and also use on the street sometimes. I was hoping to keep the HVAC and all the little dashboard controls intact.
But, it seems like it'll be easier to just gut the interior and make it a "you have one job" car that just does Lemons and nothing else. And if I get ambitious later, I can try to put some of the interior panels back in and add some creature comforts.
P.S. In my search for information about dashboards in Lemons, I like this video where they pull out the dash, weld in a dash bar, and then somewhat put the dash back together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKLd4hp4mBg
More information: the guy I mentioned many times finishes the cars he works on as if the cage was factory installed; like I said, he's particular.
The stuff he cuts out is other people's cages, not the interior, unless that's requested.
But it takes time, though his customers apparently have plenty of disposable income; after all - they're mostly drag racers. Or antique / classic car concourse guys.
so when Opel first came to the race, I had full interior in it. the safety people looked it over and told me to remove all flammable stuff, so the carpet, seats, that sort of thing had to come out. which is a shame, cause rear seats were super comfortable. the remaining parts that still on the car is the dashboard, door cards, some infill panels.
Not specifically called out on the rules iirc but stripping the interior 100% also removes a lot if flammable material as well.
Flammable material is explicitly called out for removal although there's a certain amount of wiggle room depending on one's interpretation of "as practical." Of course, what matters during tech inspection is the judge's interpretation...
3.6.8 Cockpit De-Scuzzification. Anything loose in the cockpit can be a deadly missile in a crash; remove or secure any loose items. Loose wiring can cause fires and interfere with the driver; remove or secure all unnecessary wiring, hoses, and cables. Carpets, insulation, and plastics will burn quickly and release poisonous fumes; strip as much of these out of the cockpit as practical. Large items like cool-suit chests must be extremely well secured by purpose-built metal retainers or at least two very well secured, heavy-duty, fully ratcheting tie-down straps.
At a minimum, pretty much everything. The cage builder isn't going to want carpet, dash, plastics, etc. It's hard to contort around and it's even harder when there's extra stuff in the way. Also that stuff will catch on fire and/or melt when they are trying to weld and give off nice cancer smoke. I'd recommend stripping it and reinstalling everything after the fact. I know it sucks but the shop who is building your cage will charge you way less if it's already stripped.
I'd also highly recommend shelling at least the driver door so the door bars can fill that void. You want the cage (especially around the driver seat) to be as spacious as possible... it's safer, makes adjusting lap belts easier, makes repositioning the seat easier, and is more comfortable. The PO of the 735i didn't gut the driver door before caging and even though the car is huge, the cage in our miata (with gutted doors) feels roomier.
Zacks wrote:Not specifically called out on the rules iirc but stripping the interior 100% also removes a lot if flammable material as well.
Flammable material is explicitly called out for removal although there's a certain amount of wiggle room depending on one's interpretation of "as practical." Of course, what matters during tech inspection is the judge's interpretation...
Well that's basically that, I hadn't remembered it being that explicit about carpet ect. So yeah basically strip entire interior but you can leave / reinstall the dash since plenty of others have.
mharrell wrote:Zacks wrote:Not specifically called out on the rules iirc but stripping the interior 100% also removes a lot if flammable material as well.
Flammable material is explicitly called out for removal although there's a certain amount of wiggle room depending on one's interpretation of "as practical." Of course, what matters during tech inspection is the judge's interpretation...
Well that's basically that, I hadn't remembered it being that explicit about carpet ect. So yeah basically strip entire interior but you can leave / reinstall the dash since plenty of others have.
This
We get rid of the dash as well, but there is benefit to leaving the dash if you want to use the defroster.
one more thing to note, welding the floor pads will cause everything under the floor to get hot. in our car the battery cable which happened to be running under it on the outside bottom of the car had its insulation damaged and the underbody plastic aero caught on fire when the welders were working on it.. woops. so when you're stripping the car, strip under the car (at least where the pads go) also.
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