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Team NAXJA/Petty Cash Racing stock class KOH XJ build

Awesome cage! How's the shifter mounted?


Bolts. :)

It's cool that the stock XJ auto shifter is a cable shifter, so it can easily be mounted anywhere, just four bolts.

I sat in the car and we placed the shifter where it was easy to operate......err, ergonomically situated.
 
did you just call your jeep a car?

SHAAAAAME!
 
don't you know, you can call it a car when you race it. All the cool Cali kids with the flat bills do...


Good work Richard, but why so much front overhang?


It's somewhat deceptive, without the front fascia/grill on. I could have tucked it in a couple inches from where it's at, but I left an inch between the rear of the winch and the grill in case we had to remove the grill to service a PS cooler in front of the radiator, and I left a tube length space for the fairlead to be mounted slightly back from the front edge of the bumper so we wouldn't use the fairlead for a push bar if we need to ram.....ahh, nudge somebody.


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Holy blue!

When i first saw the cage work in the front i thought you were going to dove it.
 
I don't know about Walker Evan's and Scott. Scott sold the Dust Junkies' LJ and bought a 3000 class car, he was going to enter the LJ. I hear Walker was entered on a dare but doesn't actually have a car to race. Lot's of rumors floating around about Rod Hall, we'll see if he shows up and if so in what.

We're most concerned about John Currie driving the Savvy Off Road LJ. They have a definite strategy for winning, we'll see if it works. The car is very nicely built, using Currie D60's and aluminum Savvy bumpers, rockers, and body armor. They have the best stroker motor Hesco will build, so they'll have some power. The car should hold together.....we'll see.

We also don't know what other people are building, could be some surprises in this brand new class.
 
Thought I'd talk a little about the reasons for the cage design. We decided to do a roof halo above the roof mostly for head clearance. An inside cage puts the tube very close the your heads when you're wearing a helmet. Rules spec a minumum of 3" of head clearance to any tube, and there's no way to do that on an XJ with a totally internal cage. While it would pass tech because there's just no option, we though the external cage would be safer for our own heads. Plus, because it's an Ultra4 car, and so we race in rocks, if we do lay it over we have some roof protection. We can also get away with the look of it because it's a rock racer.

We would have liked the outside of the halo to be further outward, better to protect the roof when leaning the top against rocks, but rules specify that all cage tubes must intersect, so the down bars had to meet the halo tubes. I made the down tubes as far outward as was possible without dramatically removing sheetmetal and ruining any strength in the stock structure, and made the halo the width to meet those tubes.

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It would have been nice to make some sexy bends in the down bars, making it a little more cool looking and getting the bars closer to the stock B,C, and D pillars, but to whatever degree the bars angled in at the top would make the roof halo narrower. So, I made the down bars straight and as outward at the top as possible. Straight tubes are stronger than bent tubes anyway. Also, the rules specify that foot plates cannot be welded to sheet metal, they must be bolted using backing plates, so the A, B, and C pillar foot plates are bolted. A D pillar hoop is optional, plus that foot plate is over the frame, so that foot plate got welded in, which also strengthens above the rear shackle box.
 
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