Building the roll cage

It still makes my spine tingle when I think about these sprites being driven in competition to maximum capacity without any sort of cage for protection, but for us its going to have to be a must if we are going to partake in competition racing.

The attached pictures show the strengthen bars used to support the aluminum shell of both an early Lemans and Sebring sprite (770KNX No.53 1964 Lemans and No.62 1965 Sebring) and one of the Lemans Streamliner's (ENX416C No.48 1965 Lemans)  these and other early photographs have been paramount in helping us and 'Archers Garage'  decide the vital positioning and support points for the cage and to try our best to be as sympathetic as possible in replicating the original.


We are still in the early stages of building the cage but Archers have completely removed the Aluminum shell in preparation for building and installing the cage ( We hope to post photos of this soon) as well as adequately protecting the points where the aluminum and steel meet incase of any possible corrosion caused by this clash.

Progress

  

 Before (Damaged gearbox housing)

Progress has been slow to date but its picking up and decisions about the cars specific build/mechanics and colour are looming.


We never found out what had happened to the gearbox housing/opening but this has now been completely replaced and the floor plans have been dropped as the original to approx. 2".


It was a tough decision but we decided to drop both floor plans to allow for both seats to have extra head height.

 

After (The new gearbox housing and lowered floorpans)

The Acquistion

Well this is when and where it all started back in August 2009 a beautifully hand crafted naked aluminium shell built by Craig Chapman on a MK3 AN8 sprite floor plan accurate to the original Sebring and Leman's streamliner's.  
Lots of preliminary thinking and work to be done prior to the painting and mechanical fit out. Looks like the priorities will be to tackle the damaged gearbox housing first followed by dropping the floorplans as the original's and getting a bespoke roll cage fitted.