Day 29 - 17th Dec 2010, Sunroof and Roll Cage

Well the Blog has suffered due to not working on the car, well that's not 100% true, during October I did get the welding in the engine bay and round the firewall finished, which should be the last of the welding for now. The progress on the car has slowed the past month due to the rain and floods in Queensland, hard to believe how much rain has fallen in Nov, Dec and Jan.
Now that the first phase of welding has been completed, well as much as I want to do for now, the next items that need to be completed are to fix the panel damage and sunroof and install the rollcage.

Sunroof,
I wasn't sure how to fix the sunroof, a new skin or weld in a piece? Or even who I would get to do the work, the car having to be towed everywhere was another expense. After reading the latest Brisbane Sporting Car Club magazine, I saw an ad for Impact Panel Works Moorooka, just around the corner. So went and had a chat to the guys about putting in a filler piece or a skin where the sunroof was as well as fixing the rear quarter panel that was damaged, they where very helpful, priced a skin and worked out it was cheaper to make a piece to fit.
The car is now back and as the photo’s below show, they done a great job on the car, the 3mm filler piece for the sun roof has been fully welded and is very strong, there were some issues with the heat buckling the roof, but they spent a lot of time working on heating and cooling it to get it very straight.
Anyone looking to get panel work done, I can recommend Impact Panel Works, mention that you saw there add in the BSCC Magazine and they will give you a very good deal, I'm sure I only paid for the materials and 1/4 of the labour, will have to add a few stickers to the car once it is done for all their good work..

Once the roll cage is installed the inside of the car will be sprayed and you will not notice the sunroof patch

Rollcage,
The next step is the roll cage and I'm looking at getting this to be in by the end of February, the options where very limited when it can to building a cage in SE QLD, a few people knew people, and on the forums there where a few referrals, most of these where people working out of there back yard priced from $2K up to $7K for a steel cage. The others where businesses that specialised in race car prep, these varied in price from $6K up to $10K for a Chrome cage. The old saying you get what you pay for, I’m not sure how true that is, but I will be going though the forests at +100km/h, the quality of the roll cage has to be the most important item in the car. I know some would disagree, but I will have someone else in the car with me and I want to have as much protection for them as well as myself and they will feel safer knowing that the roll cage is built by someone that has a reputation in building cages. So after talking with a number of people, reading forums and looking over some of the work done, I finally decided to go with NA Autosports down at Slacks Creek.
The car is booked in for Monday and once the roll cage has been installed I will post some picture and an idea of the price.