Project Mudslinger: All Caged In

Wes Filyaw sizes up another door bar as he constructs our rollcage. We had our Butler Built seat in place because Wes is putting just one bend in the door bar for strength, and we wanted to make sure we had enough elbow room.

Wes used 2-inch square tubing as frame support rails. They ran the length of the car, which required a bit of cutting. Wes alternated his welds above and below the tubing to keep heat from causing any warpage.

Instead of stopping at the firewall, we went through it to better lock everything in place. Doing it this way is more time consuming because you want the hole just big enough for your tubing, otherwise the weld won’t be strong. We’ll have to cap off the end later to keep mud and dirt out.

To add rigidity to the back half of the car, Wes snaked our square tubing through the inside of the rear framerails on our Mustang. As you can see, a lot of angle cutting is involved to get everything to fit together snugly, but if you want a good stiff car this is the way to go. We cut off everything behind the shock mount and stopped with the tubing there, too. A plate is welded onto the end, and we’ll use lighter-weight steel to fabricate the rest.

After the frame supports are in, the next step is locating the main four points for the rollcage. The rest of the supports are built in afterwards. Notice the space between the firewall and the downtubes on the front. Because we don’t want to add weight by making the cage any bigger than we have to, we’re moving it backward along with the driving position.

Nothing fancy about this tubing bender, but it does the job. Because there is no gauge to help Wes with his angles, he is in the habit of using a coat hanger inside the car to find the curves he needs and then tracing them onto a big piece of cardboard (or sometimes even the shop floor). When the piece of tubing he’s bending matches up with the template he knows he’s ready to roll.

A piece of round tubing is added between the stock framerails to add some lateral stiffness. If you look closely, the boxing that extends beyond the framerails is welded to a flat plate just behind the shock mounts. Hopefully we’ll never need it, but the idea is in the event of a hard hit from the rear everything is expected to bend up to the plate, while our center section stays intact.

Once the rear wheelwell is cut away there isn’t much to support the upper shock mounts. To correct for this, Wes put a curve into two short pieces of tubing and connected them from the shock mounts to a chassis support tube.

After cutting all the pieces to fit, Wes tack-welded our fuel cell cage together with the outer skin of the cell in place. Then he removed the cell and welded everything solid. To keep out the mud and muck, the lower bars are angle-cut and welded so there’s no easy entry inside the tubing.

The cage we built to support the fuel cell is welded into place inside our frame. The cell will be bolted to the frame, and we’ll add straps across the top later. We’re using an eight-gallon cell from ATL, which should be plenty given our engine size and the short races we’ll be running (20-35 laps).

We’re trying to keep our new tools confined to one tool chest so things won’t get lost. We liked this chest because the top section can be picked up and thrown in the back of the truck on race night. If you look closely you can see early sketches for our Project Mudslinger logo.

Use a pickle fork and air chisel to separate your spindles from the A-arms; You’ll do a lot less damage to yourself and your spindles than trying to get by with a hammer and screwdriver.

Never underestimate the value of an extra set of hands. Bradley Helms is Scott’s son and always willing to help out. Bradley is helping get a coat of paint on all the bare metal, and yes, he did get a big mark on his arm from leaning on wet paint.

There’s a great story about how Elvis Presley made an unannounced visit to then President Nixon in 1970. I’m not sure how much is fact and how much is myth, but the story goes that Nixon welcomed Elvis, who presented the President with a rare Colt .45 pistol. In return, Nixon gave Elvis a badge and an honorary position as a United States Narcotics Bureau agent.

For the momentous occasion, Elvis was arrayed in his usual, subdued garb: black velvet cape, a white shirt open to mid-chest with a collar large enough to camp under, a belt buckle the size of Texas and two chains with enough gold to make Fort Knox sit up and take notice. It was a fantastic outfit if you ask me, but then again, I write for a racing magazine and not GQ.

After the exchange of gifts, Nixon, who was wearing a much more presidential suit and tie, couldn’t restrain himself any longer and finally made a comment to The King about his choice of attire for a meeting with the President of the United States.

“Well, Mr. President,” Elvis is said to have replied, “you’ve got your gig, and I’ve got mine.”

That’s the way we felt as our Project Mudslinger vehicle was finally stripped to the core and ready for the rollcage. We are smart enough to realize building a rollcage we’re willing to stake our lives on just ain’t our gig, so we loaded up what was left of our car and trundled it off to an expert.

Like we said, safety is something we take seriously. Normally, guys racing in Mini-Stocks are on a pretty tight budget, but we do recommend having a professional build your cage if you don’t have complete confidence with your welding and fabrication skills. For help we turned to Wes Filyaw and NASFAB in Concord, N.C. Wes has been racing Mini-Stocks for years and is one of the few people in our area that specializes in building that type of car.

We are also lucky to have the advantages that come with living in central North Carolina, a hub for big-time stock car racing. While most chassis and cage builders will do it for you, we decided to order our own raw materials. Stock Car Steel, located in Mooresville, N.C., provides raw materials to almost every NASCAR Winston Cup and Busch team in the area, but it also delivers to any race shop within its range. The great thing about this company is it doesn’t require gigantic minimum orders like most industrial steel distributors. If you can find an outfit like this close to you that will deliver, it’s definitely the way to go. We ordered up 20 feet of 2-inch square tubing, 40 feet of 1-½- inch .095 dom tubing and another 60 feet of 1-½-inch .083 dom tubing. It was waiting for us at the NASFAB shop the next day. We also ordered a box of 50 gussets from A&A Manufacturing to further strengthen the center section.

The plan, since we will be racing dirt, is to move the driver’s position as far back as possible to get more weight over the rear wheels. To make sure we didn’t get our dimensions crossed up, we went ahead and purchased a racing seat, shoulder and head restraints and mounting hardware from Butler Built. We used the seat constantly in the process to try out different driver locations and to make sure the rollcage left the driver enough room to work. When doing this, don’t forget to find your seat height and be sure there is plenty of clearance between the driver’s head and the roof bar just beneath the window. Under no circumstances do you want the driver’s helmet to be able to make contact with that bar while he’s strapped into the seat. Sounds obvious, but we’ve seen it done wrong too many times.

Back home we decided to make the most of our time while the car was gone and reorganize the shop. More lights were fitted up, followed by a giant pegboard and a generous workbench. Then we splurged with a trip to Sears. A couple hours later we left with a workingman’s toolbox and enough tools to fill it.

Craftsman offers pre-packaged tool kits at some pretty good prices, and we snatched up two that we recommend. The first is Craftsman’s 318-piece “Essential Tool Set,” consisting of several sets of both metric and standard wrenches and sockets. If you bought all the pieces in this $499 kit individually, you would spend more than $1,500, so instead of trying to fill in all the holes in our tool kits, we just decided to start fresh for the same amount of money. The second kit we purchased was Craftsman’s 94-piece “Auto Specialty” tool set. Although this kit has a couple of tools designed for passenger cars that we will never use, the pre-packaged price again beat buying everything we needed individually. Some of the essentials we are going to need are a pickle fork kit, brake tools, a compression tester and a timing light.

Finally, we also picked up an electric grinder, a three-ton shop jack and a set of jackstands.

Part I: In the Beginning There Was...Junk

Part II: All Caged In

Part III: Shoehorn, Please!

Part IV: Toil And Trouble

Part V: What Do You Mean, Start Over?