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Roll cage failures
M
Submission by John.
360 degree welds on the cage: Often on the main hoop to halo or down bars and the door bars to the main hoop, two very difficult places to get a complete weld. One car at “Phoenix” had only tack welds on the door bars. We've also seen some really poor welds: cold, lumpy and weak. You have to be a good welder to build a cage correctly. A cage built with a 110 V flux core welder is likely to fail.
Please read the roll cage rules: A bunch of cars without backstays and main hoop diagonals didn’t survive inspection. At “Pointless” there was quite a few teams struggling to get their cages fixed before the race started. Also, two of the recent rollovers were cages that were found lacking and were fixed the night before the race. Re-read the cage rules and get it right. Your backstays should be as close as possible to 45 degrees and have NO BENDS..
Mandrel Bends. Some of the cages we've seen have crush bends. Not acceptable! If your cage is bent on an exhaust bender it is going to fail.. No question.
