Yeah, I don’t have any gussets on that drawing, but there are a bunch of taco shell ones planned (door bars, dash bar, main hoop X). The X doesn’t provide a ton of strength, but does provide a significant amount of protection when it comes to heavy roll over situations. I’m planning on doing some hill climbs, and the weight is worth the safety for me.
Ahh, thanks for reminding me about the bracing bars for the skull crusher (windshield cross member) totally forgot about those.
Cool feature on the e92 M3 GTR, that bar is actually a bolt in removable piece, so in the event of a heavy accident they can unbolt it, cut the roof off and remove the driver still in his seat in case of head/neck trauma.
I was just removing all the insulation/sound deadening crap behind my dash last night for my cage prep as well. I should be able to get into some fab sometime next month if I manage my time well. I will be very interested in your progress, especially how the tube bending goes.
Gutted and removed the dash, crash bar, and hvac system.
Also took a minute and removed all the plastic clips, tape, and harness retainers from the roof, along with the side curtain airbags. Hoping to get it down to metal and ready to strip the tar/sound deadening by the end of the weekend.
Carpet out. I plan on spending the rest of my day drinking and watching the NHL All starts Skill Comp, so I decided to abandon removing the wiring harness. (After I removed the foam and hvac ducts pictured).
Spent the morning working on this, have 90% of the interior gutted.
Removed all of the rear deck stuff, rear wiring, trunk modules, Harman Kardon sound system and a bunch of sound deadening.
Removed the door panels, modules for mirror control, the airbags, and some of the sound deadening.
Then I moved on to removing most of the harness stuff, I left some leads on certain parts if I wanted to preserve where the wiring was routed so I don’t forget when rewiring the car, but for the most part it’s all removed. Probably the heaviest wiring harness I’ve ever pulled, going to weigh it tomorrow, but I have to assume it’s 60+lbs.
Stuck some stuff back in temporarily. Have a 12 circuit EZ wire kit and a 8 switch LED panel coming this week. Hoping to knock out most of the wiring this coming weekend.
Got back to NJ over the weekend (after adding another 1300 miles to my truck, fffuuuuu), finally got some time to work on the engine bay. Pulled the lights and trim off, then got to work pulling the rest of the wiring harness, abs system, brake lines, ac system brackets (and some lines), DSC pump, and the rest of the heat shielding/sound deadening. I also finally put hinges on the hood and gutted the hood pad, wiring, and latch brackets from it.
Starting to pull stuff out.
Pretty much stripped down. Still a few bits of plastic and the OEM motor mounts in this photo, but I’ll start doing brake lines and rewiring soon.
I honestly have no idea what it will weigh. I’m not going CRAZY trying to lighten it up, as much as I’m just simplifying systems or trying to remove fire hazards. It’s metal bodywork for the most part still. Hood latches only saved me maybe 5lbs.
Yep, I’m going to be doing select rounds of XDC and one or two of DMCC, along with a couple hill climbs.
