Volvo 240 pre bent roll cage
Posted by Sean Edwards
john vanlandingham John Vanlandingham Mega Moderator Location: Ford Asylum, Sleezattle, WA Join Date: 12/20/2005 Age: Fossilized Posts: 14,152 Rally Car: Saab 96 V4 |
Bless your heart. I'm sure the orginal guy asking about pre-bent kits for Volvo is just creamin his jeans to know that.. Thank you. John Vanlandingham Sleezattle, WA, USA Vive le Prole-le-ralliat www.rallyrace.net/jvab CALL +1 206 431-9696 Remember! Pacific Standard Time is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time. |
ALS FTW Don K. Oates Professional Moderator Location: Strathmore, AB Join Date: 01/19/2015 Age: Settling Down Posts: 137 Rally Car: looking |
Is it possible they decided on requiring 1.75 for the front laterals because of the allowance for DOM vs. CDS? Doesn't DOM theoretically have a 'weak point' seam making it less robust than the CDS equivalent?
Matt: Interesting data point on $650 (cad, presumably) for materials cost for your cage. Makes me wonder how much time and effort goes into bending and profiling. But... that's for rally car #2 since I'll likely be looking for my 'training wheels' as a built car. |
NoCoast Grant Hughes Godlike Moderator Location: Whitefish, MT Join Date: 01/11/2006 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 6,818 Rally Car: BMW |
A ton. Shops that charge accordingly typically are $5-8k for a roll cage. Shops that charge less are subsidizing the build with their time for love of rally. We are in the latter group and we started doing cages after the long established rally builder's shop got busy doing their regular work and couldn't justify the time it took to build a cage. They were already at almost $4k when they stopped doing cages. Grant Hughes |
john vanlandingham John Vanlandingham Mega Moderator Location: Ford Asylum, Sleezattle, WA Join Date: 12/20/2005 Age: Fossilized Posts: 14,152 Rally Car: Saab 96 V4 |
How can speculate how another mind works--or doesn't? And no DOM is not weaker..that's how welding works...once its welded, there is no seam. I work DAILY with DOM steel...it is good---concentric ID/OD within a couple of thou. CDS isn't. Pointless speculating why once a whim decision is made it must be defended so ridiculously.. The same decision maker claimed once "HANS is required by EVERY major race organisation" and when some bright sould copied and pasted direct out of rule books a whole PILE of major federations--Italian, French, Spanish, English, Norwegian, Swedish, German, Australian and more---all organisations with rally participation orders of magnitude large than the little dozen or three or 5 entries type stuff we have--that did NOT require HANS, there was zero acknowledgement that he was talking pure bullshit.. Fuck 'em. John Vanlandingham Sleezattle, WA, USA Vive le Prole-le-ralliat www.rallyrace.net/jvab CALL +1 206 431-9696 Remember! Pacific Standard Time is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time. |
NoCoast Grant Hughes Godlike Moderator Location: Whitefish, MT Join Date: 01/11/2006 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 6,818 Rally Car: BMW |
The rules are what they are. Build to within the confines of those rules.
The profiling and fitting are what I find to require the most time and thus are the expensive part of cage production. That and shipping are what I find to be the biggest setbacks. Side note: We charge $2000+ to install a cage kit. We charge $2500-3000 for a built from scratch cage. Why looking for a kit and not just hiring someone to build one for you? If someone wanted to buy me a Volvo 240 I could use it to build cage kits. I just don't know that there is a market for a $1500 DIY cage kit for a Volvo and that is about minimum of what I would have to charge. Grant Hughes |
john vanlandingham John Vanlandingham Mega Moderator Location: Ford Asylum, Sleezattle, WA Join Date: 12/20/2005 Age: Fossilized Posts: 14,152 Rally Car: Saab 96 V4 |
Maybe the cage kits aren't $1500. Maybe closer to $800 with airfreight in.
Notched, ready to zap in. John Vanlandingham Sleezattle, WA, USA Vive le Prole-le-ralliat www.rallyrace.net/jvab CALL +1 206 431-9696 Remember! Pacific Standard Time is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time. |
ALS FTW Don K. Oates Professional Moderator Location: Strathmore, AB Join Date: 01/19/2015 Age: Settling Down Posts: 137 Rally Car: looking |
John, I think you might be missing Grant's (admittedly burried) point.
He says: ~$2,000 to install a kit. (plus your $800 cage cost = $2800) or ~$3K upper to build a cage from scratch, so likely to 'cost the same' either way, and no waiting or 'group buys' on the cage kits. |
Here's some actual info from working with tubing for a few years (10+) and a quick search of the ASTM standards for the different materials.
DOM (Drawn Over Mandrel) tubing is made from a welded tube (generally weaker) that is then cold worked between a set of rollers. This compacts the weld seam (making it stronger) and cold-working the material (once again making it stronger). CDC (Cold Drawn Seamless) is made by a round ingot being pierced and rolled. Due to the lack of cold working, the material is generally 10% weaker in yield and ultimate stress. As far as tolerances go, DOM has very tight wall-thickness spec's (+/- 0.002in for 0.095in wall) where CDS has a +/- 0.006in range. CREW and HREW tubing area welded tubes (very visible weld seam) and they are significantly weaker due to the weld and the Heat Affected Zone (up to 30-40% depending on what alloy of sheet the tube is made from). When bent they can split along the weld (kind of like a banana peel will split when you bend the banana), so extra care must be taken when bending the tube. Source: http://www.tubeservice.com/TechnicalData.html |
john vanlandingham John Vanlandingham Mega Moderator Location: Ford Asylum, Sleezattle, WA Join Date: 12/20/2005 Age: Fossilized Posts: 14,152 Rally Car: Saab 96 V4 |
Well that's what he said. Maybe his shop rate is $100/hr... Maybe it doesn't really take that long to do just the welding portion of the install... Many many years ago Ford Motorsport wrote it took 100 mna/hours to prep an entire shell. Reacently I read they now say in the Dubya Arsey cars it takes 500 hours---but that's complete wheelarches, complete towers front and rear and so who knows.. Maybe people's expectations of what their hours is "worth" differs? John Vanlandingham Sleezattle, WA, USA Vive le Prole-le-ralliat www.rallyrace.net/jvab CALL +1 206 431-9696 Remember! Pacific Standard Time is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time. |
NoCoast Grant Hughes Godlike Moderator Location: Whitefish, MT Join Date: 01/11/2006 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 6,818 Rally Car: BMW |
Our shop rate is $125 per hour. We charge significantly less than that for cage work.
Our shop rate is intentionally high as we do have customers asking us to install sway bar end links, change oil, install exhaust systems, etc. Stuff that I firmly believe a rally or race car driver should be fully equipped to do on their own so we charge accordingly. My experience with cage kits has been that there is still a large amount of fit work. Steel prices can vary but I've always found $750 to be a decent materials cost estimate. Someone who thinks they can weld in a cage kit should probably also be able to build a cage from scratch. Or do you need an engineer to help design it first? Want it drawn up in Solid Works? Grant Hughes |
aj_johnson A.J. Johnson Professional Moderator Location: Pendleton OR Join Date: 01/07/2011 Age: Settling Down Posts: 1,381 Rally Car: 88 Audi 80 |
I looked into prebuilt cages at first and ultimately decided to build my own.
My cage took me roughly 140 hours from first bend through paint. No prior caging experience, but I did have a couple of other rally cars in the next bay to look at for the "I wonder how they did it" questions. I added all the extra bars, and spent roughly 600$ on material including delivery to my front door. After seeing all the rigamarole a couple of other boise guys went through with "cage builders" I would absolutely build it myself or take it to a guy like grant or one of the other members here that does em. Even pre built cages can be royally effed by an "installer" I had a buddy do all the welds and he's a fantastic fabricator but will admit in a heartbeat that he'd never done anything rally. I tacked all the bars in place (according to rules) and he did prolly 90% of the welding. Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/2015 06:44PM by aj_johnson. |
Paul Buck Paul Buck Infallible Moderator Location: Portland, OR Join Date: 03/23/2015 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 156 Rally Car: Volvo 242 in progress |
i don't get it. i have a fair amount of welding experience, body panels, tortion tubes, but have never built a cage from scratch. it was my initial plan because my man hours are free and i am confident that i could do it. but buying a cage kit makes sense to me as well. then i know it's been bent and done correctly and all i have to do is weld it in. and on a previous note... from a rally noobs point of view everything about the way nasa presents info is better than ra. the nasa rulebook has very detailed depictions of cage options. the ra rulebook just refers you to fia rules and has a lone .gif or .pdf of one cage. this is just my opinion, but i appreciate having the info in front of me and not having to bounce around to find answers. |
MattP Matt Pullen Junior Moderator Location: Calgary Join Date: 10/22/2013 Age: Possibly Wise Posts: 282 Rally Car: 2002 Ford StRanger |
John, the reason I put a number up is the all information can be useful, including yours sometimes, the cost can compare when you have to factor in additional fab costs, as Grant has already mentioned. And I don't need blessing I'm Catholic. Mine took 5 very lazy weekends to build had a hand bender and notching tool to play with. Used the FIA rules as my guide.
Oh BTW the MSA in the UK has mandated the use of HANS from 2016 on due to injuries caused. Having seen the aftermath of an accident at last years PFR where a driver broke a vertebre in his neck whilst wearing a HANS I dread to think of the out come if he wasn't. Have you also added the tarif that the good ole US of A Customs may add to non domestic steel products being imported? Yes, it's a Ranger. Xr4Ti, it is rwd and was made in Germany. |
NoCoast Grant Hughes Godlike Moderator Location: Whitefish, MT Join Date: 01/11/2006 Age: Midlife Crisis Posts: 6,818 Rally Car: BMW |
Sometime cage kits suck though. Some of the kits still require tons of grinding on the profiles and the fit is not really all that good. Start volunteering a bunch. Figure out who is building cages and who has the tools and start buddying up with them. I've traded beer for bender use for friends/rallycross aquaintences that could design and weld their own cages. I even sourced the tubing for them (which I get a little cheaper by buying more (3+ cars worth) at once.) Grant Hughes |
john vanlandingham John Vanlandingham Mega Moderator Location: Ford Asylum, Sleezattle, WA Join Date: 12/20/2005 Age: Fossilized Posts: 14,152 Rally Car: Saab 96 V4 |
How many cage kits have you installed? Where were the cage kits from? John Vanlandingham Sleezattle, WA, USA Vive le Prole-le-ralliat www.rallyrace.net/jvab CALL +1 206 431-9696 Remember! Pacific Standard Time is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time. |
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