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| Heat shielding keeps engine and exhaust heat out of the driver’s compartment. |
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| The middle section of the car is the least changed for 2011. The cage fully ties the chassis together for stiffness and safety. |
After the victory in Ken Block’s Gymkhana Grid event, the S13 was stripped down to a bare shell and sent off for media blasting. Abrasive media shot at high velocity stripped the chassis to bare metal and also prepped it for welding. After stripping, SPD’s Scott Dodgion went to work on bringing the chassis into compliance with the 2011 rules.
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| A look at some of the small details of the cage. The down tube is welded to the A pillar and roof in several places to increase stiffness. |
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| This tube actually contains the fuel line and it was added to minimize the amount of exposed fuel line in the engine compartment. |
An S13 chassis was purchased and it became the donor, supplying unibody parts to bring the competition car’s structure up to spec. Scott tig welded all of the new panels in place, doing such a good job that it is impossible to distinguish the patches from a typical seam welded chassis.
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| A look at the roof bracing and some of the auxiliary tubes in this area. |
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| The door bars bow out into the doors, important since the car runs fiberglass doors. Drift cars won’t see high speed side impacts like a road racing car might but safety comes first. |
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| Door bar details show that they are designed to give stiffness in bending as well as torsion. The bars have a lot of triangulation. |
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| For 2011 the back part of the cage picked up some lateral bracing for additional stiffness. |
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| The rear section of the car is now triangulated to the cage for additional stiffness. This greatly strengthens it from last year’s part which was easily damaged such as what happened in Road Atlanta. The upper bars bolt to the rear section at the rear bulkhead. |
