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Let's continue checking out the roll cage, shall we? Rocco reports over 153 feet of tubing has been used so below are some more pics, for those of you who appreciate good fabrication.
The attention to paint detail offers a much cleaner look. And the red roll bar inside is a nice touch since everything else is so anthracite. Well, the official color of the car is “Hot Rod Flatz Gunsmoke Metallic.”
Here is another angle of the section, showcasing the boxed rear shock towers. That's a Koni shock sticking out of there but we'll have more detailed shots of that in the later pages.
This is where the roll cage goes through the passenger side floor board, as well as the foot rest for more reinforcement. Notice the additional point going to the front for extra reinforement of the whole roll cage in case of a serious impact here or roll over. The tubing is 1.5 x 0.120-in and is all TIG welded in-house at Level Motorsport.
Here we see even more tube supports in the trunk and no, that is not a trunk opening mechanism but rather the support for the rear wing. With all the attention to detail, and knowing how much he'd done to the car all by himself, we were afraid to let Rocco know that there was a little rust accumulating on top of those Allen bolts there. We kept that to ourselves. After all, no one wants to get beat up by a guy named Rocco. Besides, my mother is 100% Italian, and she didn't see me tough enough to give me that name. I was almost named Guido, though (true story).
There is some heavy chassis strengthening on the driver side. Woe to the car that T-bones Rocco's car here (because he'll be ok and then open up a can of you-know-what on the driver).
Rocco says that what he learned from building this car gave him the confidence to quit working for others and open up his own shop, Level Motorsport, in Glendale, Arizona. By the looks of his website, he also has his fair share of aftermarket-boosted BMWs going through there. I recall being told I was crazy by a BMW shop owner when I would take my AA turbocharged E36 M3 out to the track back in 2002. People thought it wouldn't work, or that it would blow up. Of course I was running a mixture of race fuel and 91 octane back then, but after several events and over 1000miles on track (plus the miles driving there on the highway) I never even got towed home.
