The cage is done…

Well, almost done. There are a couple of little things that need to be welded on still, like the mounting brackets for a window net and of course all of the new tubes have to be painted, but the overwhelming majority of the work is done. Here you can clearly see the new A pillar bars that rake rearwards more than before, enabling the more raked (or less vertical) windshield of the modern muscle cars look.

We took inspiration from the current Howe TA2 chassis on several aspects:

• We installed an X brace across the roof and omitted the typical short track bar running down the middle of the windshield.

• We removed the fourth Nascar style door bar on the driver’s side, and connected the A pillar and main hoop bars down to the door bar at the same place where there are connectors all the way down to the main frame rail. This, combined with a hinged door will make getting in and more importantly out of these cars substantially easier. Howe’s design is slightly different, but effectively the same net result.

Obviously this cage redesign is exactly the same as we’ve done on Craig’s car. Yes, its made me a little nervous to weld in a cage without a body above it…but the measurements are the same as on Craigs, so the body fit will be…the same. In theory.

Now that we’ve done this modification to two chassis, we are comfortable that a kit can be made to save other people the hassle and time of having to figure out how long each bar needs to be, where to bend the tubes and how much to bend them…and the trickiest part of all, notching the tubes to properly fit. This car and the one behind it are very close in the critical dimensions, more than close enough to correct during final fit up of notched tubes. We’re doing some investigating to see if we can find a partner with automated bending and notching capability to create such a kit.