I kinda have a question about cages that ties into this. How good at welding do you need to be to weld your own rollcage? Is it something I could learn in a year (Taking classes at somewhere like BOCES, not learning on my own)??? It seems like build looks better vs buy if you can build a cage (or know someone who can do it for you) vs having a shop do it.

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LexusFman
I kinda have a question about cages that ties into this. How good at welding do you need to be to weld your own rollcage? Is it something I could learn in a year (Taking classes at somewhere like BOCES, not learning on my own)??? It seems like build looks better vs buy if you can build a cage (or know someone who can do it for you) vs having a shop do it.

I think you would want to be good enough to pass tech, which is a low bar. And good enough to trust you and your co-drivers safety to your welds in the event of a big off. Where this bar is for you cannot be answered by other people on the internet

From a skill perspective you will need to be able to make a good bead with good penetration on a tube to tube joint. This is fairly straight forward. You will also have to be able to weld out of position, ie upside down, vertical, backhand, etc, etc. To be able to get a full bead around all of the joints. That part is a little harder.


I took a couple of welding courses at a local community college and I found them very valuable. The things that I got that I would not have had if I tried to teach myself were:

- An experienced professional welder who would look over your shoulder and help correct bad habits before they start.

- The physics and chemistry of how welding works

- Free shop supplies and scrap metal to weld on. This was great because when you mess up the gun tip or just need to practice laying bead after bead you just goto the store room and get more supplies.

- Use of a known good welder. This way you are not trying to troubleshoot the welder while trying to learn what you are doing. Or if the welder brakes you just switch to a different one and keep welding.

The classes I took were pretty flexible so if you wanted to learn out of position or tube welding they let you bring in your own stuff and would help you learn how to do it as long as you were not interfering with the other students.

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Andrew_Frick

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LexusFman
I kinda have a question about cages that ties into this. How good at welding do you need to be to weld your own rollcage? Is it something I could learn in a year (Taking classes at somewhere like BOCES, not learning on my own)??? It seems like build looks better vs buy if you can build a cage (or know someone who can do it for you) vs having a shop do it.

I think you would want to be good enough to pass tech, which is a low bar. And good enough to trust you and your co-drivers safety to your welds in the event of a big off. Where this bar is for you cannot be answered by other people on the internet

From a skill perspective you will need to be able to make a good bead with good penetration on a tube to tube joint. This is fairly straight forward. You will also have to be able to weld out of position, ie upside down, vertical, backhand, etc, etc. To be able to get a full bead around all of the joints. That part is a little harder.


I took a couple of welding courses at a local community college and I found them very valuable. The things that I got that I would not have had if I tried to teach myself were:

- An experienced professional welder who would look over your shoulder and help correct bad habits before they start.

- The physics and chemistry of how welding works

- Free shop supplies and scrap metal to weld on. This was great because when you mess up the gun tip or just need to practice laying bead after bead you just goto the store room and get more supplies.

- Use of a known good welder. This way you are not trying to troubleshoot the welder while trying to learn what you are doing. Or if the welder brakes you just switch to a different one and keep welding.

The classes I took were pretty flexible so if you wanted to learn out of position or tube welding they let you bring in your own stuff and would help you learn how to do it as long as you were not interfering with the other students.

Very good comments here. Just like driving GOOD and driving FAST, with welding there is no substitute for simple TIME doing it, practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice.

And just like driving, or building engines, or most things, an honest self-critical evaluation of what you did, then more practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice .

I should add on the equipment: yeah a welder and WIRE SIZE correct for the job....and very important: right juice to the welder....which means the wires in the wall, the gauge of the wire in the extension cord, super important for people at home/garage...I was arm twisted by a whiney fuck Masshole punk to do some basic tack it in place of a FIA kit at home because the whimper punk coundn't whine at his daddy enough to drag the car to the shop and my nice reliable welder didn't want to work very well there.. I took my own homemade overkill extention cord but it was sputtering and hacking and doing the bird-shit cold thing so finally I pulled the box the welder was plugged in to out of the wall to look at the wires to the outlet and here was some shit little 16g wires---which were warm.
Can you say voltage drop?

The other thing for ass-spiring welders to do to make things a shit-ton easier is to prep the surfaces to utter beauty..Get all the mill scale off. Sand with 100/150 grit emery strips, shiny and BARE. Guaranteed 5 times easier..

After all the melting point of oxides are invariably 3-5 times higher.....and the melting point for dirt and rocks is even higher..so its way harder to weld scaly, and especially dirty steel---and the shit compromises the weld integrity...

This is nothing to scoff at, you or somebody WILL EVENTUALLY depend on the welds--and not just in the cage, but the thing its welded in and to: the body shell.

The better the welds and the better the fir and the better the intergration of cage and shell, the better the car will work and the longer it will last..

practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice practice .

---

John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
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