Thread: Electrathon - A Different Kind of "Hotrod"

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Thanks HRD. Hey, maybe you should get some conduit and build along with me..?

OK, notice in the pic above that I bent the front of the conduit so that the pieces will come together at the front. They will be positioned so that they come together and also turn slightly upward.

I determined that to accommodate the shoulders of an average person, the width of the car needs to be 21 inches at the shoulders. On the original car, we tapered from the rear cross member forward. At the area of the driver's elbows, the width has shrunk down to a little over 17 inches. That's fine for a driver that is of slender build, but from driving that car myself, I have determined that comfort would be improved if I maintain the 21 inch width at least to the area of the driver's elbows before beginning the taper. With that in mind, that is how I laid out the outline and set the stop-blocks on the plywood jig.

With a very slight bend at the "elbow area", the conduit lays in the jig like it should. I used a piece of the 3/4" conduit and a couple of clamps to hold the pieces in place. This was not clamped tightly enough to damage the conduit, just tight enough to make sure they sayed flat on the jig while I did some welding. I then tack-welded the fronts of the conduits together and cut, fit and tack-welded a crossmember where the back of the seat will be. At this point I also formed the main hoop of the roll cage from 3/4 inch conduit and tacked it in place. The crossmember and the bottom of the hoop converge at the same palce.

Bending the roll cage hoops is a challenge... I do it by bending the conduit a little, sliding it through the bender, bend a little more, repeat, repeat, until I get the shape I want.