Here is a sneak preview of the roll cage that is being put in our Time Attack 350Z. The door bars are going in today, and I will take some more pics of the completed cage. This cage was built and designed with not only safety in mind but weight savings and chassis rigidity were the over-all goal. I can't waight to track test this "all new car" next weekend.

Not the greatest pics of this cage and they do not do it justice, but there will be more to follow.................




Here is one of the parts that I am most excited about. It is where we extended the cage thriugh the front firewall and tied it directly into the double walled structural part of the front strut towers (a real PITA).

 

Nice! Looks pretty crazy lol. Can't wait to drive it!

 

which rule book you designing to?

 

Like I stated, This cage is designed for "Time Attacks" and that is what it will be used for.

 

Nice Mike. That battery looks awfully familiar!

 

The car doesn't really fit into any specific class of SCCA or anything like that so we created our own rules lol. With Scott's involvement and knowlege in NASCAR and the fabricators knowlege of doing cages for all types of racing I am confident that its meets or exceeds the standards of most racing sanctions, but it isn't tailored around a specific set of rules.

 

LOL I bet.

 

Hey Scott! You might want to check into the NASA and FIA rules, although Redline Time Attack has no rules for cages, I believe the Super Street time attack goes by NASA rules and the GT Live time attacks go by FIA rules. If you guys ever want to do those events it might be a problem. I have been looking into this myself for my Z...

 

Might as well check the NASA and SCCA rules in case you want to run with them. They have diagonal bar requirements for some cars, I believe.

In any event, what you have going on there looks really impressive! That ought to give some very serious additional structural stiffness as well as safety. Can't wait to see the finished product. And zowie...that front connection is something else. "PITA" does not begin to suggest what that extension must be like to install. Good work guys.

 

^^^Thanks guys. That is very true about the N.A.S.A. and FIA rules. We get too caught up in the Redline stuff and forget about the rest lol.

 

Hi Kuah,
I was on the phone with Dan Hauser yesterday from Redline, and they are taking over GT Live operations soon. So GT Live will use the same Redline rules. My Silvia is the same in that my cage does not follow nasa or scca guidelines. But it is built well.
And i only have plans to use it for Time Attack.
Great work Scott.

 

Wow thats bad ***, i wish i could build my car up like that.

 

Definitely need to finish the triangulation of the diagonal for the roll hoop - again, the key is triangulation which doesn't just improve safety, but also improves rigidity as well. But I'm no engineer - just a lousey business consultant... LOL

 

Sweet roll cage. I saw pics of it earlier on Mike's myspace.

Damn Scott I was hoping to have my car back today as a birthday present.

 

Very nice.

 

As it is shown in the pics would not work for SCCA. But you can always add bars to make it work.


That is sweet how he worked it in to the front towers.

 

^^^There are plenty of other things on the car that wouldn't fit into any SCCA class either .

We did make a huge mistake though in overlooking the N.A.S.A. rule book. Our mistake, but hopefully we don't have to make many changes to comply. We didn't realize that N.A.S.A. ran the Super Street Time Attack as well as the Grassroots Motorsports Ultimate Track Car Challenge. Both of which we had planned to do with this car.

 

Great! I have been reading the FIA rules the past week, and it would take a lot of work for me to get the car fully FIA compliant... NASA rules were a little more lax IIRC, I'll have to dig those up again...

 

My original plan for my car was to run it in the now defunct SRX Class. Because my car could not go into any class that nasa had at the time. And then the Lord created Redline and he said this was good.

 

Since I'm preparing a article for the Summer '07 issue of Nissan Sport Magazine on custom fabrication and rollcage construction, I'd agree that this cage, while impressive, won't fit SCCA (T2) or NASA (PT) rules. It might fit SCCA GT2 rules, but you'd be racing with purpose-built tubeframe cars. Maybe the best fit would be NASA's super unlimited class, if you decide to go road racing with your Z.

BTW- the Spring '07 edition of Nissan Sport is just coming out. I think every Nissan and Z fan out there will be blown away by it!

David Muramoto
Senior Editor
Nissan Sport Magazine