+1
Now you know the biggest reason not to install a cage. No one does fab work in any semblance of a timely fashion. I know it will come out of Joe's shop looking amazing. But the downtime is killer.
Jim
JDM 2VGT/Whipple/Spray
9.93@138
MP#s10.89@124 Boost
10.11@133.7 w/Nitrous
DelValLO 9 sec. street truck!
And to know I forgot about this thread! About time, did he tell you an expected date now that the process has finally begun (hands on) ?
,
2009 seadoo RXP-X riva waterbox with rude rear exhaust outlet, Rude upgraded bigger supercharger, riva sponsons, fuel pressure regulatoR, RIVA pro blocks, riva rear air, solas prop, custom riva racing ECM, intercooler upgrade, intercooler relocation bracket,60lb injectors
Hey everyone, sorry for the delay in updates!
My truck was on the back burner for a while. Joe is a 1 man show, so only so much can get done, and there's priorities as to which vehicle gets done, and I voluntarily told him to take his time on mine, since I could really use the open garage space at my house with finishing up the renovations, and had the 5.0 to race in the spring. Quite a few killer vehicles have been in and out since my truck has been there, so its not as if nothing was done the past 5 months. Quite a bit has! A 7.50 cert cage, an 8.50 cert cage, several suspension setups on vehicles, etc. And my cage is about 75% complete. I esimate it should be about another month and it'll be done. Really not a whole lot left on it. Plus, Joe is too kind, people show up and drop things off and take advantage of him expecting their stuff done ASAP. And I guess I'm too easy as well saying no biggie, just knock mine out whenever. It's all worth it in the end, because the quality of work is outstanding!!!!
I'll try to get some pics up later today. Catching up on NHTOC. My laptop is 4 years old and has barely 1/4-1/2 gig of free hard drive space so its slow as a snail. New Vaio with 6 gig ram and 750 gb HD should arrive this week so I'll be able to jump online more frequently and not fight with a 4 year old 140 gb 2 gig ram machine moving as fast as a ricer in the opposite lane!
Here's a sneak preview till I get the pics up in the gallery....
Last edited by Harley#356; 05-30-2011 at 10:20 AM.
LET THERE BE PHOTOS!!!!!
Aight fellas....finally time for an update! Some real nice progress made over the past several weeks, and I can say with confidence this cage sets the bar for roll cages! Hesitant to post photos because I know ideas will get robbed and no credit given to the man who did the fab work, but the ones who will steal the ideas will steal them regardless, and this is such a fine work of art of a roll cage, that it'd be a shame not to share the photos.
For those who were afraid to install a cage because you have to cut up your truck, and routed it outside the dash to try and make it less intrustive, well we've all seen the results, and it ends up looking MORE intrusive being in front of the dash than sleekly placed behind it. Not even going to stir the pot again on the other style cage was getting on here since some got their panties in a bunch But for a jungle gym that a 10 point cage can be, this one is as tucked away and out of the way as it can possibly ever get.
So here we go....photos & timeline descriptions....
Truck was looking like it was at a chop shop instead of a chassis shop at first with how much that had to get removed! Full interior, windshield, rear window, tonneau cover, then I robbed the 22's for my street truck and put the snow tires & old 20's on the race truck About the saddest my truck has ever looked in 11 years haha
Rear window removed....got a trim piece smoothed and painted, and the f'er didn't fit! Turns out L rear surrounds are different than HD ones, so I had to sand and smooth my stock one and have that painted.
The 1st bar is in, known as the "B-bar" or the main hoop. It's tucked so far up to the ceiling it's almost mind boggling how he fit it in there with a good 6-8" of tubing through the floor to tie into the frame riggers
Yikes, bare bones!
YES the cage is welded to outriggers on the frame. Joe also welds in floor plates so the cabin is essentially welded to the frame now. Elimaintes any chances for squeaks or flexing if they weren't tied together since the cage is welded to the frame, and the body is on rubber mounts. Strenghtens everything further
Joe's tig welding is smooth as friggin budder its ridiculous! These cell phone pics don't do the welds justice. I'll have to get pics up with the real camera. once it's painted the welds practically vanish they're so friggin smooth!
Main hoop & harness bar in!
Halo and front down bars (A bars) installed! Tucked waaaay up. Joe tacked these with the headliner in, so they're literally shoved up as far as they can possibly go and bent to match the contours of the headliner.
Windshield cross bar. Looks are decieving with the headliner out, but the headliner does go down and touch the windshield bar. And it's still far enough forward to still fit the overhead console.
Gussets
Drivers side A-bar. The gap by the A-pillar is for the triple pillar pod to still fit in place. Normally it'd be tucked tighter without a pod, but Joe was able to make it work with retaining my gauges
Passenger side A-bar. The bars actually pass just BEHIND the HVAC vents too, so there's no need to eliminate all the HVAC ducting.
Aw-chit! As badazz as the bars look, they'll still be nearly 100% hidden once back together. The top bar and gussets are completely hidden by the tint strip in the windshield, and the pillar bars will blend in a lot more with the A-pillars once reinstalled and painted black.
This is one of those trademarks of a Precision Fab rollcage. The dash plates. Contoured to match the dash curves, and still allow the dash to be removable after the cage is installed, and allows more clearance than just a hole popped in the dash to allow for expansion/contraction of the dash plastic and not have creaks and squeaks. These are getting texture painted and SEM painted to match the factory dash texture and color. PIMP!
Just hibernating :sleepy:
Floor plates fully welded. Heard some guys consoling each other on how hard it is to weld to the floor material without burning through, welds looking ugly, etc....well gotta say...thankfully wasn't a case with Joe behind the welder! The tubing is tigged and the floor plates are migged. Joe's mig welding looks better than most guys tig welding! Friggin impressive to say the least!!!
My FAVORITE shot so far!!!!!!!! Where's the cage?!?!!? Guess what....it's all in there! Everything other than the swingouts, which are removable. So what was that again about a cage is so intrusive and really takes away from the vehicle? What cage! When you can open the door and see practically NOTHING....you know the cage was done right
Dash coming back together...
A-bars...again once the pillar is reinstalled with the gauges the bar sits right up against them. The headliner comes down to the top bar, and the tint strip hides the gussets!
Swingout puzzle pieces...
Another one of my favorite parts....the swingouts ends welded and smoothed into the swingout bars, absolutely seamless transition...just wait till they're powdercoated & carbon fiber wrapped
Perfect fit with rear doors...
Swingout fabrication in-progress
Bad-Azz!
Fits like a friggin glove, and still enough room to use the arm-rest with the bars in!
Little side project....11 years of wiring from gauges, switches, neons, alarm system, etc. made a mess of my underdash wiring. Joe modified the lower steering column cage and put an aluminum panel on it for me, and i wired up all my aftermarket wiring onto this plug & play panel. All my switches, gauges, etc. plug into the back, and it all unplugs if I ever need to remove it.
Front side, has my relays, terminal boards, and a 12v distribution fuse block. Props to Casey for linking me to that blue sea systems 12v dist block
Smoothed and painted rear window surround and LED 3rd brake light installed! now the ONLY piece of black plastic left on the exterior is the wiper cowl!
Joe welding in the window net brackets
In full swing fabrication now baby!
Joe notching the rear bars
Rear bars mocked in. if I had a crew cab these would have JUST fit in the cab. But bars out the back window are too badazz We could have went through the rear cab wall, but I didn't want to lose the rear bench
Interior....minimal rear headroom lost...
Fuel cell & rear bars....how much more badazz could that view from the rear get?
Side shot....maximum rear headroom retained, and minimal tonneau cover intrusion. The rear bars were a balancing act of keeping it tucked away on the interior since the front is extremely tucked away, yet still meeting tech, and on the exterior side, getting the bars planted as far rearward as possible, yet minimally cutting into the hard tonneau cover.
Rear bars will make nice solid "oh-chit" handles for rear passengers
Joe fabbing in the rear bars. Not welded yet, need to get the rear tinted lexan window done, and the headliner has to be reinstalled through the back window with the cage tucked up so high.
Here's yet another constraint on the rear bars....the rubber trim rings for the bars through the lexan, only allow a certain range of angles to pass through without distorting the rubber seal, so the rear bar had to go through the window at that set angle, then turn downwards to minimize the hard tonneau notch required.
And this is what 700 hp "Looks" like in chromoly form
Going to swing by again today. With the holiday weekend probably not a whole lot else done. Joe had a parking lot of other smaller jobs to get knocked out. He has to order tinted lexan AGAIN because twice in a row the people sent him scratched up pieces Once the rear window is done, the frame outriggers can be welded in, the cage can be painted, and the interior buttoned up. Not a whole lot left! I've got a little gauge rewiring to do since I'm losing my overhead triple pillar pod with the windshield bar passing through that location now, so adding dual aeroforces to the radio bezel.
Stay tuned.....should be 100% completed sometime in June!
His design and workmanship are friggin awesome. There aren't too many guys who are capable of that kind of work and even less that will put it into every job. Congrats!
Mike, that means a LOT coming from you! I know your standards are as high as they get. I'll pass the compliment onto Joe!
I was a nervous wreck at the thought of doing a full 10 point cage in my truck. And if I saw how Casey's turned out before hand, I may have never of made the jump. I feel so bad for that guy, such an impressive and clean truck and the chassis builder on his did a total hack job. Really hope he can get it straightned out the best it can be. Just shows how far you really need to do your research because a cage isn't a simple bolt-on, it becomes part of the vehicle. Once I saw Joe's work first hand in Dave London's shelby GT-500 I was sold. Then I come to find out he's done work on Boyd Coddington cars (Boydster II), he's got vehicles in the Peterson Automotive Museum that he's done work on, he used to work for Nascar, build engines, do windtunnel testing, I mean everything! And seeing the 6 and 7 second racecars that leave his shop, absolutely incredible! The cage was worth every penny and worth every day of the wait for the quality of work that has been put into it!
On the down side....the list of mods I never would have even entertained the thought of doing, are now on the future mod list after seeing Joe's fabrication skills At least the up side to that, if you dump tons of money into an engine to push it to the extreme to go faster, something may break and $ out the window. Dump the money into some other chassis/suspension mods, save weight, strenghten parts, go faster, and very little chances of something breaking! lol
On a side note, here's a couple quick very ROUGH paintshop chop jobs at how the rear will look once completed. Forgive the MS Paint editing lol. Maybe somebody can do a better job for me with photoshop, but this shows a bit better how the rear window will look with the bars coming through it with the tinted lexan hiding the interior bars. Then how the bars will look going through the cover. The rear window and bed cover will both have SS trim rings and rubber gaskets though.
Last edited by Harley#356; 05-31-2011 at 10:27 AM.
Josh your cage is so kewl...Joe is really an artist....this will be so stealth...!
Someday........
There are 7 second cars runnin here at Pacific Raceways that aren't that well put together. Hell, I few pieces of 4 inch glass and some kevlar inserts and it would be enough to take back to Afghanistan!
Dude, did you fart?
Originally Posted by cayman150 View Post
Welcome to NHTOC.
You may need to re-phrase your first post as I'm having difficulty interpreting what you mean. Do you want the back end to be a different shape or do you just want to be able to spin out in it?
lol thats the ironic part, he actually IS an artist as well, beyond just chassis stuff. Last month when I stopped by he was fabricating this squigly curvy spun metal finish 4' tall aluminum sculpture for some artist that wanted him to build their "creation" they drew up lol. Filled to the brim with talent!
Truly bad azz Josh. Congrat's.
This is INCREDIBLE!
I find it difficult to realize how you have done SOOHHH dang much during a mere 10 years!
Looks damn good!
Also good to know the L & HD rear window surrounds are different. Ive been on the look out for one to smooth and paint; it looks as though one from an L is out of the question now. Thanks for saving me the hard lesson learned.
Reason I was looking for another, is because I heard you cant remove the surround without removing the window.. Is this true? I ask because you have reinstalled yours without the window.
Technically 11 years! The trucks birthday was May 18th Although the real performance modding didn't begin till 2005 when I blew the 4R70W and went supercharged
Yep, please spread the word! In all the years on the forums I never once read they were different. Turns out it's like 1/4" on the outer edge. Even the holes are different, but after we drilled the new holes figuring they just changed bolt pattern, we discovered the hair difference in contour. If anyone local has a L that wants a smoothed painted surround, I'll sell it cheap!
The rear windows are interchangeable though!
And yes that's correct, you need to remove the rear window to remove the plastic trim piece. Thats why I hadn't gotten it smoothed and painted previously, never wanted to deal with yanking the window. It's actually not that bad though, and the old butyl tape comes off really easily if you ball some up and just use the old butyl to stick to the remaining stuff on the truck, it comes right off. Do a solid rear window when you paint the surround!
Another update from yesterday....
BEFORE: Bare metal dash plates, contoured to match the factory dash shape...
AFTER: Painted with SEM texture paint and SEM black for a practically exact match to the factory dash....slick!
And just some drooling over the quality of the welds...
Tig welded belt tabs...
Tig welded chromoly tubing, and mig welded floor plates, where the tig welding looks smooth as butter, and the mig welding looks better than most guys tig skills!
Solid rear window surround....shame had to bust out the glass, only way to remove it from the frame lol. Hopefully 3rd time is the charm for getting un-scratched tinted lexan! lol. This is the biggest piece of the puzzle left to finish it all up!