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Here's our upgraded and beefy seat mount. This is integrated into the cage on one side and the frame rail via large plates on the other. A concern was that this would mount the seat too high, but this ended up being a non-issue as well. Seat height is lower than when we used the stock mounts on the previous car.
Up close you can see how the door bars go through the B-pillar. We ended up flipping the door latch 180 degrees and moved the mount on the door up as well. This worked like a charm.
So this is why I would recommend either stripping the car more before the cage install or better yet, getting the whole thing dipped. Hours turned into days, days turned into weeks while we tried to get all the seam sealer up to prep for seam welding and paint.
Flames ended up being about the only option to getting this stuff off in tight places. We used grinding wheels, flap wheels, wire wheels and more to chew through this stuff. Needless to say, we needed more unpaid interns for this job.
To top it all off, when dealing with the fumes from the seam sealer, we had to wheel the car outside… in the middle of winter… in the Midwest. We also tried sand blasting, this didn't work very well at all.
To top it all off, we hadn't removed all the extra little bits of metal that were just extra weight on this build. With the cage installed, this meant it was much more difficult getting into tight places to drill and cut. Plan in advance and get all this done before you go installing the roll cage into your own vehicle!After the cage was completed, we didn’t stop there. We stitch welded most of the chassis, focusing on areas that would see high stress. On top of that we tied the cage into the unibody where possible. At the end of the day, we learned a few things. If, and when, you decide to build a cage of this magnitude, spend the money to dip the chassis and then have it coated. We spent weeks on weeks on weeks grinding and cleaning sealant and various goo from the car. The amount of money invested in time and grinding wheels and brushes far surpassed the cost of just dipping the car and calling it a day. Also, make damned sure you have removed all the extra bits of metal you don’t want on the car before the cage is installed. Plan ahead! Trying to drill out those last few spot welds in extra tight places was no fun. So there we have it, stay tuned as we delve into each aspect of our car with no secrets held back!
