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| Costa welds the plates that attach to the main hoop tubes last. This way he can tilt things a little so he can get a full 360 degree weld around the main hoop and the cross tube easily. You would not believe how many cages I have seen with only partial welds. I have even seen this on cages built by some pretty famous companies. If you cant get a full weld, you are not using the full strength of the tube! |
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| The critical main hoop to forward leg juncture is first welded around the bottom. Costa has cool ways of dealing with these welds and we will show you later what he does. |
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| The dash bar is fitted and tack welded in place. |
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| The side impact beams are fitted. Costa is being very careful as Matt had a very bad accident in 2011 where he received minor injuries when the rear of a car actually made it inside his car overriding the side impact beams. Costa is taking many steps to reduce the chances of this ever happening again. |
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| For true triangulation the bars should all meet together. Many fabricators don't take the time to do this as the mitering is very tricky and instead have the bars meet several inches apart. This is much weaker. Costa miters everything together. For good Tig welds, the gaps must be tight so a small electrode and filler wire can be used to minimize the heat put into the tubes. It is much more difficult to do things this way but Costa does it right. |
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| The harness bar and rear diagonal go in place and are tacked together. |
