Drag Talon Buidlup

After the main hoop had been placed in the chassis we continued on with installing the two rear bars. These tied into the bar we had across the strut towers. These had now become the easiest pieces that we had done. All that was required was a notch at each end to the right length. No trimming, angling, or gueesing at heights, just nice and straight forward. If only it were all like these ones!

     

In a further quest for weight reduction we deemed it necessary to remove the metal structure across the front of the car. It was a good thing we did as the weight of the tube going in will be a lot less than the weight of what we cut out.



With the rear section of the cage already mach'd up we started in on the windshield bars. We had a couple of options here to weigh out. We could either do the roll cage with a 1 piece halo and then weld bars off of it along the windshield and down to the floor. Or we could do a 1 piece bar from the main hoop, along the roof line, down the windshield and then to the floor, followed by joining the two with a single bar to create the halo needed. Playing around with a test bend lead us to believe the 1 piece bars down the side were the way to go as far as clearances, the only problem is that it is a far more complicated path to take as we are now dealing with compound bends in our cage. After a couple of attempts we had the correct bend down and it was only a matter of a few minutes to finalize the other side. Once the bars were bent came even more fun, trying to fit the bars with a moving target on each end! This proved to be a tedious and time consuming task as there was lots of back and forth to the grinder and notcher. We were able to match them up perfectly after all of the back and forth though.

     

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