TARP Blog

Paul of Stick Figure Racing, a fellow MR2 LeMons outfit, emailed me with an excellent tip: we should pick up some electrical conduit from Home Depot and bend that to make template forms for the cage, then take that with us when we go to bend the DOM steel for the real deal. Should minimize bending mistakes. I’ll pick some up and bring it with me on Saturday when we move the car to Jesse’s shop, then we can fab the mock-up before going to the bender.

The V-RAM guys have a very useful Picasa gallery showing a lot of their roll cage fabrication, as well as some other stuff. I like the cherry bomb muffler install, we need to copy that when we cut out our existing cat and exhaust setup. Their blog also has some very useful background info (like to get to the track early to minimize stress.)

Also, here’s a useful site with some photos of another MR-2 roll cage fabrication. I’ll try to print these out in color (as well as with some of Paul’s photos), as that should be useful when we’re modeling our cage. One thing that I notice in looking at those photos is that this cage is not up to 2009 LeMons spec, in that it’s not a 6-point or better cage. But this at least gives us a good starting point on the main hoop. I think we’ll want a better door bar on both sides, plus we need the rear diagonal braces and the windshield hoop too. It’s encouraging to see that we’ve stripped out the interior of the TARP Special to a greater extent than this team did at the time these photos were taken.

BTW, the silver Snowspeeder car finished 17th at the LeMons race at Thunderhill in December. If we can keep our car running and on the track (a/k/a not black flagged for collisions), we could be a contenda.

Advice from Other Teams, MR2, Parts, Race Prep Author: Pat