The past few days I've just been doing a bunch of cage work, though my dad finished fiberglassing the windshield frame and he also did some fiberglassing on the driver's fender which needed some touching up where a previous owner had improperly repaired it. The windshield frame and fender are now in the paint prep stages of being primed/bondo'd/sanded. I didn't get any pictures of them though, and sadly just have some photos I took with my phone since I was too lazy to grab the DSLR while working on the cage.
As far as the cage is concerned, I got the rest of the major pieces in which just the harness bar was remaining. This is how far the seat can recline when scooted all the way back. It might not look like much, but it's enough to stretch out and as much of a relaxed position as I wanted to have (in the event of waiting on the female in the parking lot for instance).
With the addition of the harness bar are the diagonals I had mentioned I would add in the rear. They go from the rear body mounting plate to roughly where the main hoop gusset terminates so it kinda looks like the two tubes would nominally connect and continue through.
I obviously had some leeway in positioning of the harness bar on the diagonals because of the tolerance for mounting of the shoulder harnesses. What I chose was to have the harnesses mount to the bottom of the harness bar, this way the harness bar would be as high and forward as possible. I wanted room to recline the seat a bit, but mounting the harness bar on the diagonals really moved it back, and I didn't want to jeopardize cargo room as much as possible too. I think it worked out really good though, the bar doesn't look weird and super far from the seat, and doesn't really intrude on the cargo area much.
After the harness bar was set I built the diagonal braces coming off of it. They tie into the main hoop's mounting feet and terminate on the harness bar roughly where the edge of the seat would be projected.
I am VERY stoked with how it turned out and it should be much stiffer than the old cage in every aspect now, I also think all the bracing in the back looks pretty sexy and since everything is out of plane a little I think it makes it a lot more unique and cool than a normal cage with a harness bar.
With all the main components of the cage finished, I drilled the holes for the passenger seat and test fit to make sure everything was fine and then did a test fit of the harnesses which worked out fine. The lap belts will bolt right into the "stock" locations, and then the shoulder mounting eyelet I will just weld to the bottom of the harness bar to keep a clean look, and due to clearance with the gas tank for the two anti-submarine mounts on each side, I will be welding those eyelets facing forward onto the mounts the seats bolt to.
I have a few pieces of scrap tubing laying around too, which I'm debating to turn into some mini tube gussets. I already made one that's like 6" long and connects the knee bar to the windshield cross tube and I think looks cool (it's also the only joint that normally isn't gusseted at all) so need to make one more of those. I was thinking of running more little gussets between the rear diagonals, or maybe inside of the halos and the spreaders, I don't know. I don't want to get too carried away, especially when the front and all the mounts will be further reinforced with the 3/16" plate gussets I have in the mail.
Anyways, moving forward it was time to pull the cage to begin fully welding it. I dropped my parents off at a trail today and they're hiking over the divide, so it was all on me to figure out how to pull the cage off. My dad had already put two hooks in the ceiling for preparation of this, but it was still a pain in the ass and I had to have my sister come help a few times.
This is when it'd be nice to have a tall ceiling. Even if I had moved the truck forward where our chain fall is, it wouldn't of gained enough to be worth it I don't think. Initially I tried using two come alongs but they were too big for the amount of room I had, let alone how high I needed to move the cage.
During all of this, the cage was getting pulled to the right since I was using a ratchet strap on the right to try and stabilize it and I guess it was pulling more to the side than I realized and then to add to that the driver's knee bar wasn't tacked on the bottom and I didn't know it, so it broke one tack further back and twisted the base plate and the knee bar off the side which was annoying. Long story short, with my sisters help we moved the truck forward and out from under the cage and used some ratchet straps to hold it up. Probably one of the sketchiest things I've ever...
I don't know how much the cage actually weighs, I think with 4 dudes it'd be pretty easy to move it around but like I said, it was just my sister and I. It took me awhile to figure out how to get the stupid thing down from the ceiling without killing myself. Obviously most of the weight is in the middle/back, so the front ratchet strap wasn't holding a ton of weight. Luckily the cage was near the garage door enough I could pull the tractor in far enough to get the bucket under the back of the cage (which luckily is just narrow enough to fit both rear mounting feet inside the buckeT), so with my sister guiding me we lifted the back of the cage up and then lowered it down, and then we could lower the front of the cage by hand and then tighten the ratchet in the front and move the back end down, etc.
Finally down:
I measured the bolt holes in the truck and was able to ratchet the leg back into position, it seemed to mainly just have rotated to the left so was pretty easy and then I tacked it (a lot).
And after that I began welding everything! Eventually I'll flip the cage upside down so I don't have to do any overhead welds. I'm far from an expert welder or fabricator, but I would like to think some of my welds are turning out nicely.
They might not be the prettiest welds ever, but I trust them! And that's where I stopped today after welding most of the joints I could easily reach.
