You Learn a Lot About a Car When you Ruin it

7/06/2024

I watched four Fast and the Furious films yesterday. I also installed door bars on my cage. I think I did my bends and copes at about the rate of one tube per film.

The Fast and the Furious franchise started off at the same time that the American car culture was rising to its peak. Car shows were popular, people went cruising on Friday nights, and yeah... some people raced. The original concept of the movie was based on a 1998 Vibe article titled "Racer X", by Ken Li, about illegal street racing. In fact, once Paul Walker and Vin Diesel were selected for their roles, director Gary Scott Thompson sent the pair out to witness actual street racing events to learn how things worked. But we're interested in legal racing here.

If you're going racing, you need to follow the rules. SCCA says you need side impact bars, and so I made some last night! The top bars were the first ones I made. They each had two bends, and I just went with full symmetry left and right. The bottoms were simple: just straight tubes with copes at the ends. I used cutoffs and leftovers to make the little vertical brace thingies. They're probably important or whatever, but I don't think they're required. The most important thing is that they look cool as heck. Just like the cars in Fast and the Furious.

The car scene in the late 1990s and 2000s was a mix of show and go. Cars had crazy paint jobs, big wings, body kits (Z3 fenders on literally every Civic... do you guys remember that?), and decals. Lots of decals. Some of them were fast. Very few were furious though. I'm not sure where that came from. I hope this Audi is fast enough. I know it's going to have lots of decals. Again, not furious. Enjoy the pictures!

7/08/2024

Did you guys know that John C. Reilly was in both Days of Thunder and its parody, Talladega Nights? I didn't know that until this weekend, when I watched Days of Thunder.

Days of Thunder was one of my favorite movies as a kid. While Top Gun made me want to be a fighter pilot (yeah, that didn't happen), Days of Thunder made me want to be a race car driver. The all-star cast, the behind-the-scenes peek at what it takes to compete in NASCAR, and the exciting story all made this movie great. Just getting to see a little bit about what it takes to build a race car made it worth the watch.

Of course, I needed to channel my inner Harry Hogge, played by Robert Duvall, to get this cage knocked out this weekend. And that I did. Almost. Kind of. I mean, is any drama all that exciting if there isn't a mad-dash at the end of it? That's where I am. I've got, basically, until early Monday to get this thing "done", or at least complete-enough to roll out onto my driveway and abandon for a couple of weeks. I think I can make it. I've got all the parts done--so I think I just need to weld the thing as much as I can, ratchet strap it tight and drop it, and then weld the top of it. And paint it. And install the rocker boxes. And cover up the sun roof.

OK, it's a lot. But I got a ton done just yesterday, and I think I made the hardest parts already. Just yesterday, I hammered the snot out of two formerly-flat-but-now-curved plates to mount to the firewall, mounted tubes to those, built a knee buster bar (the dash bar), braced the trunk floor for the rear main tubes, and made those tubes. I also made a roof diagonal bar thingy with a pair of 15 degree bends to pitch it upward a bit for extra headroom. I actually have plenty of headroom as it is, but more doesn't hurt. Oh, and those Days of Thunder door bars--I got the vertical supports tacked in place for those.

7/11/2024

Welding has begun! Some of those tubes are now permanently part of the car. I don't have any pictures at the moment, but I did watch Jake Gyllenhaal's Source Code while I was welding. If you're looking for a good sci-fi / quasi-time-travel thriller movie, put this one on your list--somewhere in the middle. Gyllenhaal was great, but the story was... well it wasn't The Matrix. Don't get me wrong, the story was interesting and novel, but it didn't get into character development enough. If it did, then I didn't notice.

Then again, it was 90 degrees in my garage and I was wearing a welding jacket and burning my legs with hot drippings from the welder. Perhaps I didn't catch 100% of the story. I would have liked to see the story continue after the point where it ended, though.

Has anyone seen my coffee? Where's my coffee? I know I left it here somewhere...

7/13/2024

Not much to say today. I did a lot of welding, and I made two gussets. I will likely need to make more, but this is a start. I need to get the car back on the ground and out of the garage so that I can be ready to use the garage again. Progress is about to slow, but I am pretty much there with it.

I did pick the color for the cage though.

All of them.

All the colors! One tube gets blue, another gets yellow, another gets red... It feels very VW.

7/14/2024

Driving a car without a drivers door is weird. But I was able to do that tonight! The work is by no means complete, but things are progressing, and I am super happy with the way things are going so far.

Also, I was able to ratchet strap the cage to pull it in as I wanted to, so I think it should drop as planned without any serious issues.

Also, dang those wheels are heavy! It's time for lighter wheels, I think. 

7/29/2024

I'm back at it! I took off for a little over a week for some planned vacation. The name of the game this weekend: Super Troopers. And also gussets and rocker boxes or whatever.

The garage has been reconfigured because we need to get the cars in and out now. So, I will clear it out and reshimmy the A4 while I work on it during the weekends, but I want to be able to start it and move it back over so we can fit one of the other cars inside during the week. This makes it a little more challenging, but I also tend to keep the garage cleaner this way. Plus, I want my wife to have access to her garage spot.

Has anybody here ever seen Super Troopers? I think it came out in 2001 or 2002, so I was still a kid, but the movie holds relevant today. It was one of those witty cop comedies starring the Broken Lizard comedy guys. They also did the movie Beer Fest, a few years later, which I hold to be the better film, but Super Troopers was more widely-known (and easier to come by as it was on Hulu, and Beer Fest was not).

The movie follows the group of Vermont State Troopers as they patrol their small section of highway in Spurbury, Vermont. Their department is on the budgetary chopping block as the Governor of Vermont is out, I suppose campaigning for reelection, and is cutting state police funding in the process. The lead characters stumble upon a drug ring that involves the local police department, solve the crime, and get beaten up a few times in the process. Super Troopers is full of quotable one-liners and memorable scenes, especially scenes involving Officer Rodney Farva, played by Kevin Heffernan. In the end, the heroes end up getting the support they need, but in an unexpected way.

Just like how my roll cage got the support it needed, although in an expected way. I wanted to make some gussets to strengthen the link between the door bars and the front main hoop, so I cut some 8" slices of tubing, notched a few 45* cuts into them, and welded them on. They fit right where I wanted them, though I did have to cut away some of the dash support, including the bottom of the bracket that holds the fuse panel. The fuse panel will need to be relocated, because the tube will go right through where it needs to live.

Oh well. That's what zip ties are for.

My dad came over and helped me fabricate the end plates for the rocker boxes as well. This is the first time I've really used CAD (Cardboard Aided Design) to fabricate anything. Gee whiz is that ever a good way to do things! The most challenging part was the front driver's side. The forward wall has to come down along the frame rail and deal with curves in two dimensions, despite being completely flat itself. Finally got it though. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to weld that thing in there later on, but that's a future-Mike Tries problem. We'll remove the rocker boxes, one at a time, and TIG weld them together next weekend. Then we can pinch the cage and drop it to the floor, finish welding the cage, paint it, and raise it. There will be a few such drops and lifts as I weld and paint the main part of the cage, then install the rear stays, drop it again, weld those, and lift it one last time. I have a giant clamp that is wider than the car, plus a bunch of ratchet straps--this should make the job relatively.... possible.

I have to say that the rocker box part was my biggest worry--that it would be hard to make these little metal plates--but we had a good time yesterday and it worked out just fine!

Present day me, here. I broke the windshield like a doofus (you'll see it in a future past update as I catch this thread up). This was what we, in the business, call an oopsie daisy. It is also an opportunity, because I really wanted to gusset my cage to the windshield frame.

Safelite will replace it for me for a pretty agreeable sum. But, I want to get it out before they come so the tech doesn't get mad when I say "woah there, buddy, I am going to do some welding!"

How should I go about this? Kick the old one out, then weld, then schedule a new one? Do you think they would agree to hang out for 40 minutes while I quickly grind, weld, and paint?

In reply to confuZion3 :

We did this on our Lemons car after an unfortunate but predictable outcome of using a hammer to swing at a bracket right next to the windshield. We removed it ourselves ahead of time, the auto glass dudes make their money on getting it done fast. 

There were two types of tools that we used, I believe both from Harbor Freight. Seal remover and then the cutter. Seal was pretty easy. Removing the glass sucked, lots of elbow grease, while taking care not to shatter it. Got that out and cleaned up the few pieces of glass / adhesive remaining, and then the access to the dash / front bar / etc was incredible. All cars should come with the windshield removed, so that some idiots can later turn them into race cars.

8/02/2024

Busy day today! My dad came over and we watched Guardians of the Galaxy. What an incredible movie. The origin story of Star Lord.

I'm going to keep this update short because I'm lying on the floor and I'm becoming a bit uncomfortable.

Today we welded the absolute snot out of the rocker boxes, then we ratchet strapped the cage together, dropping it to the floor. I then ratchet strapped it to the trunk, tilting it backwards, allowing great access to the tubes I needed access to. The flap on the door bar is just a place to clamp the ground clamp to because it slips off of the tubes.

(Future me, here. Don't distress the gaps you see there in some of those welds. I've since returned to some of them and fixed them.)

Enjoy!

8/03/2024

Paint is going on! I'm not a very good painter, so it's going to look passable at best. At least it'll be interesting! It's going to be blue.

And red.

And white.

And yellow.

And magenta.

8/05/2024

Oh, by the way, just because the paint is starting to on, it doesn't mean the cage is finished. I need to paint the top of it while it's dropped, or else that'll never happen. Once I have the upper cross bar and windshield bar coated, I can finish installing the other components, like the rear main bars, a cross brace for those, the dash bar, and a host of bits for the main hoop that I removed so that I could bend the thing. It's really hard to think this many steps out, because it's a 3D problem, but I think I have to shove it up onto the rocker boxes again, weld what I can for the rear main bars to the main hoop, then drop it again to weld the tops of those. Then I need to evaluate whether I can leave it up to weld the dash bar. If so, then I can weld in the rocker boxes, the front legs to the firewall... it's a weird problem to work through, and there's no instruction manual for it. It's been a super-fun process, though, and I'm glad I'm doing it. Also... I'm glad I'm doing it to a wagon--I think that makes things a little easier.

8/09/2024

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa... merica

Can someone explain to me how this car is being ruined?  

It's a thought I actually had a few times when going through all of this. When you start off something like this, you've got a perfectly-good-enough car that you could sell to someone for... maybe $2,000. Maybe a little less. But it's got some value. At the far end of this process is a race car that has some value that may exceed $2,000, but it doesn't have to--somebody will buy a ready-built race car. You don't need to be building a race car, either. You could be restoring something--the calculous is the same to me.

There is a point where the car is stripped to the core and is useless as a daily driver, but not built-enough for somebody to want to buy as a ready-built race car--or even an almost-complete-just-needs-a-few-safety-bits-car. At that point, it's scrap. You're out of both markets. Nobody (well, mostly nobody) wants someone else's project car. With a car like this, one must pass through the "scrap valley"--from where there is no return--to the other side, or else you lose the whole car and it just goes to a salvage yard.

As of today, the cage is structurally-complete, the belts are in, the seat is mounted, and I can drive the thing around. I think I'm on the far side of the valley, but I knew back in May that there would be a point that I'd pass where the car was, effectively, ruined.

In reply to nakkinator :

I didn't realize that there was both a seal and an adhesive. I thought they were one and the same. (Or is it one in the same? It's and, right?)

I might have just found a solution--a windshield replacement company seemed to think that what I was doing was interesting enough that they agreed to come out and replace the thing in two different appointments. Sometimes, you get a little bit of luck on your side and happen to encounter VW people when you're trying to fix your close-enough-to-VW product.

I hope it's one and the same! Otherwise I've been saying it all wrong.

Been a while but I am pretty sure in addition to the adhesive that actually seals, there's a rubber weather stripping seal that we had to pull out first. We didn't replace that part from laziness. 
 

Enjoying the build thread, pics and even movie commentary. 

I am glad you are enjoying it! 

8/10/2024

Did I have the whatever-they-ares on there yesterday when I made my last post? The forward tubes?

No? OK, cool. Then I have an update. Why don't you pull up a chair and sit down for a bit. I'm going to sit all backwards-like on my chair and lean on the back of it. Just a style thing.

These last steps are really hard. It is hard to think about the next steps when I am not there staring at it and listening to Disturbed. It's hard to keep it all in my mind's eye. So, planning it while I am doing the dishes is not in the cards... I don't get to show up to start on it with a head full of ideas. My worry was that the rear tubes would only be weldable from the top if the cage was dropped. But, I can't drop it much if the front tubes are welded on. But... if I do the rear legs first, there is no way to tilt the cage back to get to the forward tubes.

Fortunately, dear reader, we thought about that in early design (which I forgot about). And I have a station wagon! The rear mains come down at a nice 45 degree angle, and I have a cavernous cabin to work inside. So, no, the rear mains aren't going to be a problem at all, and I can weld them with the cage in place.

Do you listen to music? The Sound of Silence is a great song, but I only like the Disturbed version. Kind of wild, since it's not really in their wheelhouse, but they nailed it. That song, done by Disturbed, got me back into rock and metal again after being kind of out of that for 5 years or so. They're such a good band! I always thought of them as a noisy, but fun-to-listen-to, rock band. Maybe they are, but lead singer, David Draiman, is an extraordinarily-talented vocalist, and that makes a huge difference when you're trying to set your band apart from the rest.

The cage? Oh. Yeah.

I got the cage back up on the rockers and released the ratchets to get the front tubes tacked in place. Then I ratcheted the whole thing in again and dropped it. Rear rocker boxes came out. With the cage once again able to be moved about, and with the rear rocker boxes out, I dropped it again and ratcheted it towards the trunk again to tilt it up at the front. That allowed me to fully weld the front legs in.

It ALSO allowed me to gap weld the absolute snot of the front rocker boxes. Unless you're an SCCA scrutineer. In that case, I welded absolute perfection as there were no gaps between the boxes and the rockers. They're 75% in. Need to run a seam up the front of each box. Pain in the tookus that is, but it is possible.

Uh, photos. Here ya go! Not many of them tonight.

Note that the cage is tilted way back in this picture. When it sits flat, the front pad jams up nicely to the firewall.

8/12/2024

I got in there yesterday for a bit and welded the rest of the driver's side front rocker box. That was the hardest thing I've ever welded so far (future me, here... is there a word for something like irony or foreshadowing when the writer thinks he's just reached the summit of the mountain, only to realize he was, basically, still in the parking lot near his car and the real summit was still MILES above him?). What made this challenging was the front vertical seam, so I had to be in the foot well to see it. But I was wearing a welding helmet and a respirator (seriously, if you can't identify what the smoke is made out of, you probably shouldn't breathe it in), so jamming my head in there was a challenge. Imagine--I've got the steering column with the wheel attached to it still (because I like to party), and I've got almost the entire harness terminating right there, so I had it all bungeed up and out of the way as much as possible, and then I just stuffed my head in there like an ostrich stuffs its head in the sand (myth: they don't actually do this), and went to town. The car only caught fire twice, and they were little fires that I could blow out with a puff of Argon/CO2 mix from the welder.

Is it weird that I let one of the fires burn for a few seconds just to watch it?

Next up: THE OTHER FRONT ROCKER BOX!

That one was significantly easier. I got some foam pads and laid them on the floor of the car. Then, I got everything situated where it needed to be for easy reach. Torch was within reach, the.... what's it called... wire thingy? The hose? The black bit that connects the torch to the welder that the gas and wire pass through. The welding lead--that's it. Thanks!

Right, so I got that in place and got comfortable. Respirator on. Gloves on. Helmet on. Into the foot well!

Then, I promptly ran out of gas.

Damn it.

So, next time on Mike Tries Roll Cages (I'm Mike, by the way), I'll finish that Rocker Box. I did get a majority of the front seam done--I just need to button it all up and be done with it. Then, I guess the following in this order:

1.) Weld in rear rocker boxes.

2.) Weld in knee buster/dash bar.

3.) Weld (maybe just tack for now until I'm sure) the plates on the forward tubes (seen in 11 August's posts, as dated in the post itself) to the firewall, thus sealing the fate of the cage as part of the Audi forever.

4.) Weld in the bits to the main hoop that are made up but not installed yet (left and right harness bars, lower diagonal bit).

5.) Weld the rear main tubes to the main hoop.

6.) Weld those same main tubes to the chassis plates in the trunk.

7.) Weld the four remaining tubes to their rocker boxes.

8.) Get into extra-curriculars with some bonus tubes. Maybe a diagonal down the rear main tubes. Maybe a brace from the lower part of the main hoop to somewhere near the bottom of the rear main tubes. Stuff like that.

9.) TACO GUSSETS!

10.) Paint the rest of the cage.

11.) Return everybody's tools to them before I start getting anxiety about it.

It's getting close. One solid weekend's worth of work, and I'll bet putting parts back on it. Not many parts, mind you, but like the doors and the dash pad, and the seat. The window net is ready to go on, too, so I'll do that when it makes sense to do it. Probably after the cage is solidly-installed to the car.

8/25/2024

I burned the rear rocker boxes in finally. That was way more frustrating and challenging than it ought to have been. The sheet metal on the rockers kept blowing through no matter how low the power went. I finally found a technique that allowed me to run a bead at a super low setting along the rocker with good penetration into the body. I would then run a few more passes to build up some gloopy weld beads. Then... MAXIMUM POWER! I'd melt it all together once it was built up. I was concerned about heat affected zones (HAZ), and so I would let things cool between runs. We swapped sides periodically to keep it from overheating. The passenger side ended up looking better than this side, but I'm not particularly proud of either. 

Also, did you know you can't weld to seam sealer? Yeah. There is a lot of seam sealer in the back of the rocker area. It wasn't an issue on the front. Yeah, remember that term I asked about in the previous post? About irony? I would have a good bead going, then I'd run over a crack that had sealer behind it and POOF!, my weld puddle was gone. Getting rid of that is just a matter of time and elbow grease. And fire. Scrape it with a screw driver of you have to. Then burn the remainder out with a torch.

Also, there is a lot of seam sealer UNDER the car. And that stuff loves to catch fire. So that's alarming. But that's why you do this stuff with a buddy! In this case, my dad came over. He was on fire duty. We jacked up the car for better access for him. He also used my welding spoon which I made by cutting a piece of Copper pipe to length and beating the absolute snot out of it with a hammer. Want to make one? Slice one of these pipes halfway through, about 6 inches from the end, and flatten it. My dad said he could shape my molten weld puddles from underneath! Plus, the copper soaks away some of the heat making it less likely that you'll melt through.

These things look bad in the photo, but there are a couple layers involved and they are as solid as I can make them. They're stronger than the sheet metal that makes up the rockers, at least.

8/31/2024

The cage is officially part of the car! I got the front pads welded to the firewall. Then I put the knee buster bar in after shortening it a bit (welding things make them change shape more than you might think!). I was able to even get the front passenger leg attached to the rocker.

I also took a long look at the wiring. I really want to make sure it isn't going to be in the way, or that it isn't going to get stuck on the WRONG SIDE of a tube. I removed the connectors from one of the connectory-holdery-thingies, and left them unplugged. I'll just go ahead and discard that plastic chunk, click everything back together later on (one at a time so I can figure out what it all does), and zip tie it in place.

9/2/2024

Lower diagonal is burned in. So are both front legs and the driver side main hoop leg! Next up is the harness bar, then rear main tubes!

9/07/2024

Whew.

I took this thing to task yesterday. Rear tubes are in. I made a diagonal brace for those. I also made a horizontal brace for them. Harness bars are in. Everything you see is welded in fully. The cage is, I think, complete. Needs paint. I'll add a bit of bracing between the main hoop and the rear tubes, but it's not required. I just think it'll look cool and make it stronger.

I also plan on adding some gussets, but that's just extra too.

The seat is not installed at this point. I just set it down in there because I wanted to see it. Same with the harness. 

9/07/2024

Yeah, so it started. Apparently. Without all these wires plugged in. No idea what they do. They are probably for all of those features that ended up in a landfill somewhere near York. I guess the drivers side headlights don't work... that is probably one of these harness plugs (anybody know which one?) (spoiler from future me, which is also present me: I figured it out--it was one of those plugs). ABS is probably not working either but I don't know yet.

So.... yeah... time for a victory lap!

OK, you're all caught up to where things are on the other forum. Dates will be whatever is in the post now. Updates will come in more slowly now, too, as I still need to watch more movies.

Actually, you know... speaking of movies, I've actually been more into TV shows lately. I've been watching Adventure Time. I was never into that show, though I always kind of liked it the way you might like a show that you see on every once in a while, but never engage with enough to watch. You know, like 24, or Breaking Bad. I'm having a hard time getting a grasp on who and what all of the characters are, but I think that's by design. BMO is their game console? But also perhaps the greatest character in the show? BMO got his own adventure, apparently, in sort of a movie--and I watched that, so maybe I did see a movie in the past week or so?

So, yeah, given that, I probably have enough ammunition for a new post since I've also installed a few things for driver safety. My main drive right now is to get the car ready enough to do an HPDE in October and/or November. I shouldn't need all the race car stuff, like a fire extinguisher for example, to do an HPDE. Then I can install that stuff over the winter, at least knowing that the car worked when I parked it in the fall. Paint the cage, do a final install of the seat and belts, maybe wash the thing... oh yeah, and the windshield/gussets.