RE: 4ksq roll cage

[Mark Nelson <mnelson@brls.com>]

<<I was refering to rally cages only. The very best road race cage
builders 
 in this country will come short of English  in rally cage
construction.>>

I realize you were talking about the rally cages only, but obviously
much of the engineering that goes into road race cages can be applied to
rally cages.

<<The best rally cages in this country are built with essential
attributes  of homologated GrA cages and not knolledge of road racers.
Look inside Paul's Hundai next time you see it. Than look inside GrA
Toyotas and Fords. Same design. Look inside Carl's Ford.>>

I've seen inside of the Hyundai, Cozzie, and the Lancer and I agree that
those cages are VERY well built (esp. after seeing the results of Henry
Joy's roll in Prescott).  After talking to Guy Light (one of the top
points leaders in PRO Rally), who lives in the area and builds/preps
rally cars, namely Dave White's VW GTI Gr. 2 car, has some ideas he's
told us about on how to improve the cages being put into the new cars.
His ideas are very innovative and safety is on the forefront of his
mind.  His ideas seem very logical and well thought-out.  You'd be
surprised with some of the engineering expertise that comes out of this
country in the area of cage design.

<<I feel however that it is also a money issue. Homologation cage in my
Toyota was about $4500. That included seam welding and double plating as
well as strut braces for front upper and lower suspention pickup points
tied into the cage. That didn't include complete diassembly and paint
stripping and repainting.  Trouble here is that you also need to rewire
the whole car completly because original harness doesn't fit any more
(and is bad even in Audis). And the list goes on. This is too much money
for a privateer without sponsorship. And when budget is small we end up
building minimum to pass tech sometimes not realising possible
concequuqnces.>>

I believe you have to look at it from the standpoint of what are you
gaining by using one of those expensive cages...is it because TTE built
it?  I frankly don't quite buy that reason.  I believe you can build
just as strong a cage, if not stronger, and have considerably less
invested.  I believe that the cage in my car is actually going to
be_safer than a Gr. A cage, in that we are actually building the roll
cage structure all the way up to the front bumper.  This will improve
the car in two areas that I see: 1) the front of the car will be
considerably stronger in the event of frontal impact and 2) using this
design will allow us innovative ideas for making the sub frame and
designing the front end so that we can easily remove the entire
drivetrain from the car in very little time.  The other nice part of
this design, is that in case of a wreck, all we have to do is unbolt the
front end sub structure and move all the good parts over to another new
sub structure and we're back in business.

cya!
	-mark