Door Bars and Cage Finish Work

To Finish up the Cage I took the car to Mitch Marchi at CMP Fabrication. He designed, bent and welded in the Drivers side door bars, added a few bars to stiffen up the cage and built-in some jacking points. Mitch's shop is in Waterford Michigan and his work is top notch, I highly recommend him to anyone in need of any fabrication work. When my car was at CMP there was all sorts of project cars in the shop, everything from a Boss 302 mustang with trans am history to an Alfa Romeo GTV6. Prep and Paint work has started on the interior of the car, but I need to finish up all the detail work before I can lay down the final color.

Seat Mount

Yes, this may be a very complicated way of doing something simple, I could have saved myself a day of work and just notched the factory rear crossmember, but what fun is that. I couldn't use the factory mounts because they were in the worng spot and they are too high once you get your cage in the car. So I cut out the factory rear crossmember and welded in a new one. The factory seat mounts use a stud sticking up into the interior, I changed this to be a welded nut inside the seat crossmembers so you can bolt the mount down to the floor. I had a set of aftermarket sidemount seat mounts but they wouldn't work because there was a bend at the bottom that made them too wide to fit inside the car. So I cut them up as well and made my own.

Roll Cage

The Cage I bought for this car is a Prefabricated Weld in cage from S&W Racecars. Working with limited tools (2 angle grinders, tape measure, level, and a Miller Mig Welder) makes the job very tedious. It took me three full weeks to finish. S&W's cage kit fit very well but the next car I build I will be changing from the front Halo and A-pillar style construction to the front down bar that extends from the front footwell all the way back to the top of the Main hoop. With the Halo setup its difficult to get the bar close to the roof to get me most headroom possible (very important in the F-car platform) This forces you to move the seat lower by cutting the factory seat mount out and fabricating your own mounts.