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Welding costs?


Guest Anonymous

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Guest Anonymous

I recently ordered a 14-point (Sportsman) roll-cage from S&W for my '73 240Z. I may or may not use the sub-frame connectors that go through the firewall. What would be a fair price to have it welded in?

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I've had prices from $200 for 6 point cages to over a grand, depending on the fabricator. I'd suspect an average shop will want between $400-600 to do it, including pushing through the firewall, which I hughly recommend.

 

Mike

 

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"I will not be a spectator in the sport of life!"

mjk

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Guest mattrp

I am going to be getting a 10 point roll cage very soon and would like to do the welding myself. I have a hi quality wire feed welder, and am reasonably good at it. Is this something i should consider. I just want the extra structural strength and safety, this car is not going to be for all out competition. Heck, I'm taking the thinkg to college for the next four years. Some lead foot driving and occasional autocrosses are the only things its gonna be doing.

 

Matt

72 500Z

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Guest Locutus

if you are good at it, I would say go for it, or at least tack weld and fabricate everything. If you tack weld and put everything in place, a good pro welder could do the real welding in a very short time. Probably less than a couple hours, don't go to a race shop to get it done, find a good blacksmith in your town, they usually have more experience with different thickness metals being welded togther, and they always have scrap metal for that piece that never fits just right.

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I'd get a pro to do it and I'd do it at a chassis shop. A well equipped chassis shop will have any material needed and they will have done this a million times over. It's your life and it's worth spending a few dollars to protect it - a poorly installed cage is worse than no cage at all. If you don't think so try to imagine what might happen in an accident if one of those pipes breaks free and either cracks you in the head or spears you....

 

In my case it's going to cost me about $1200 or so for a cro-mo cage that will hit the rear wheel wells in at least two spots, the floor behind the seats, loop over the drivers head, go along the tops of the doors, drop to the floor on the front pillars, go across the windshield, and have sidebars dropping from just above shoulder height to somewhere down near my ankle but not so high as to make entry difficult. There may be a bar along the bottom door sill and possibly a cross bar between the side bar and that bar.

 

My thoughts with regard to side protection is this - if I get stupid and slid into a tree I'd like to not die. If someone runs a light and spears the side of my car I'd like to survive. If something happens and the car ends up on it's side and I get speared I'd like a chance to live. If I'm rear ended I'd like a crumple zone behind me so I won't run tubing all the way back there, same with the front - the rear towers are already tied as are the front. Hopefully the fuel cell will hold up and I'm considering further protection for it as well when it's installed.

 

If you've ever looked into the doors of an early 240Z you'll note that there is ZERO side impact protection. I've removed the window guts from my parts car and the door is light as a feather now - that's very little protection in an impact and I value my life. While my car might never see any real racing I'm trying to build it strong enough to pass tech simply because those tech rules exist for a reason and in some cases lives have been lost developing them. (shiver)

 

Yeah, I'm a wet blanket but this is safety and maybe someone's life. I know everyone is probably thinking how they never intend to test a cage in an accident but then I don't know anyone that actually plans an accident anyway. A good chassis shop will know the rules and understand the engineering needed to protect the driver properly. My car will be a challenge but I trust the guys doing the work as they build entire cars out of pipe all the time. Find someone like that yourself, tell them what you want, and don't cut corners.

 

God forbid that you ever have to test that cage but ask anyone who has had to test one and lived and you'll understand where I'm coming from. I've seen several cars in the chassis shop after having had "accidents" at the local circle track including T-bone hits - yikes! In each case the cage has held and the driver walked...

 

P.S. No, I'm not going to do swing out bars I don't think. I considered this but most everyone I know that has them takes them out and then they don't do any good at all. My Mustang has a bolt-n cage and I wish it were welded. Thankfully it has impact protection from the factory. My Miata will get a HardDog bar when I'm feeling like I can work on yet another project. Convertibles make me nervous :-)

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I have a friend who is a professional welder. He went to trade school and knows how to do fancy stuff like weld disperate metals and has even had a chance to do some work on high tech stainless alloys for medical devices. He also doesn't charge much (too little I always tell him).

 

But you're probably no where near Durham, NC.

 

Anyway, my point is that he took an hour or so to teach me how to weld properly. He's not very big-headed about it, but he works about 80 hours a week and consequently is an expert welder. At the end of my lesson he said that's pretty much all it takes if you're simply welding steel to steel. Adjust your feed speed and the gas so that your weld burns thru really well and lays down flat. With practice and a steady hand, your welds will look much prettier. Of course if you're welding thin sheet steel there's more technique and skill involved. But for mating fairly sturdy pieces together,such as tubing, the important thing is to just make sure that both pieces burn a good ways thru and the resulting bead lays down as flat as possible.

 

Man, for $600 you could buy a really nice welding outfit (like say a 220v Lincoln weldpak with gas) and have the fun and experience of doing the job yourself. And then you'd have the equipment to do whatever else you want to. The great thing about welding: if you make a bad weld, all you gotta do is grind it off and try again. Besides, it's always difficult to find someone to do work on your car that cares as much about that work as you do.

 

Just my opinion. Feel free to go to my website and critique my welds - they're often not pretty, but they're all plenty strong.

 

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http://240Z.jeromio.com

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Actually I'm already looking into getting a welder myself - electric service in the garage might be an issue though as it's pretty weak right now. Practice practice practice is what it takes to weld well. Unfortunatly it's pretty tough to tell how well you've penetrated the pipe without cutting it open and looking and that of course defeats the purpose :-)

 

I spent some time at a local gas company when I was younger. Those guys have to have PERFECT welds and are tested on a regular basis. I'll never forget sitting in one of the offices looking at three examples of welds. One of them had perfect penetration and looked awesome, another was too little heat and barely penetrated, the last was too much and really went through the pipe. Each of them were labeled with what was wrong and only one was labeled as "passing". The kicker? From the outside each one of the pipes looked damn near the same! Welds looked like butter and perfect to me - from the outside. Cutting through part of each weld and through the pipe in a cross section told the tale - wow.

 

Welds on a cage don't have to be THAT exacting and I'm dying to learn how to weld but for me I'm going to spend the extra cash and not sweat it. The cage I'm doing won't be the S&W cage so it'll require custom bent tubing and that would be a bitch to learn too as I'd be sure to screw up a few times. On top of that it's cro-mo which is harder to weld correctly. I considered mild steel but my chassis guy only uses DOM steel and that's almost as expensive so...

 

I would be interested in knowing what steel the S&W cage uses. I assume from the price it's mild steel but is it DOM? If it's got a seam in the pipes it's not DOM which is what I'm assuming judging from the price. If it's DOM then grab it and run - that's a damned good price! DOM is "better" but not that much better an dnot required by sanctioning bodies in the classes we'd run in so no biggie.

 

To each is own, heh my 10cents worth anyway :wink:

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That's what I figured. Not bad stuff as I'm sure they've sized it to pass tech but if you had a choice and money was no object I'd go for cro-mo, followed by DOM mild steel, and then the regular seamed stuff. (shrug)

 

Looking at their prices that's a pretty tough deal to beat if you're on a budget. Autopower also makes some good stuff but it's pretty pricey compared to S&W. Installed correctly there's nothig at all wrong witht he S&W stuff - those guys have been in business a good long time and should know their stuff.

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Isn't the Autopower bar the one that bolts to the inner wheel well in two places each side?

 

I've heard it doesn't do much for rigidity (and I believe it, since those are not where the loads are and they are thin.)

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