So where to start with the chassis? I guess we'll start with the original plan. The idea was to leave everything stock but we all know that stock isn't fast so plans changed. The interior got gutted, a roll bar was fabbed up and welded in, a custom chassis harness was made, the floor got cut out so my seat could sit a little lower, and some other little tid bits like the dash getting flocked was done. Also around this time I decided to go full race car and run a standalone and a racepak setup for optimum street cred.
Here's a photo of dealing with the sound deadening. I used a combination of dry ice, xylene, a wire wheel, and some fire. Dry ice is easily the fastest, but you'll be high as a kite if you use xylene so the choice is yours.
Once I got the interior stripped I went ahead and started mocking up seats to see how tall they'd be. Unfortunately I have a bottom mount bucket and no access to a plasma table and press break to make side mount adapters so the seat still doesn't fit exactly how I'd like it, I plan to redo it.
I cut the old hump out and put some new metal in, with some massaging it fit, again not the best but it's welded in now so I suppose it's good haha.
Now that I had the floor cut and the chassis clean I went about installing the jungle gym. I really only installed the roll bar and fixed bucket seat because I ripped the automatic seat belts out of the car and just don't believe in harness bars, so fitting it super close to the chassis wasn't that important, I knew I wanted interior back in the car when it was all said and done so I actually cut my main hoop a bit shorter than you should on a competition car, regardless it'd still pass any tech, it's just not what I'd call "race spec".
I started with one of our pre bent roll bar kits from work and welded it up myself, this was my first large TIG project and I was really excited to do it, the only hard part was welding the down bars to the main hoop because I kept catching the headliner on fire #streetcarlife.
Here's an up close shot of a couple of welds, like I said this was one of my first TIG projects and I hadn't gotten a good feel for starting and stopping or turning my wrist while welding so there's some widening of the puddle in places where I hesitated and got things hot, overall though I'm happy with how everything came together.
Specs for anyone who cares,
120 amps
1 PPS, I don't remember my pulse settings
1/16 ER70s2 filler
3/32 electrode with a sharp point
Big ole gas lens
Here's a pic of the roll bar all welded in place, I ended up building boxes to raise everything up where I wanted, the diagonal bar didn't let me cut the hoop short enough to put the hoop up on the back seat shelf. remember what I said about burning the headliner welding the rear down bars? Well I could've avoided that by making some holes in my boxes allowing me to drop my hoop down for final welding, you live and you learn.
*The seat isn't in its final position in this photo I did get it lower
Here's a look of the paint I put on the cage, I used Rustoleum hammer finish black. I also used the brush on type with a sponge brush and this makes a huge difference, the paint goes on super thick and makes an awesome powder coat like texture. 10/10 recommend.
And here's a photo of the seat bolted to the bracket I made, the top belt angles still aren't ideal, I really want to convert the seat to a side mount set up and tilt it back about 10* and it'd make the belt angle "legal".
Now lastly I also did some interior mods after I got the roll bar situated including flocking the dash and making some custom aluminum panels. I also wired the car but I'll make a separate post for that.
Street Faction is a awesome comapany that makes awesome products but as someone who owns fab tools, a welder, and has access to buying material I can't justify their cost. This heel plate cost me 2 hours and $20 for example.
Okay so next post we can probably go over engine install and stuff like exhaust fab then get into wiring, sound like a plan? Cool well that's all for now!