Soren Frimodt

This beast looks soo good! I wouldn't mind driving that everyday, even though its a coiler Top job Sir 👍

One of the questions we've all asked so many times: How much weight exactly is there to be saved by going from steel to rope wire, well in my case with the following parts it was 9kgs: 13kgs for the wire and 4 for the rope, both with their respective types of fairlead

Just so you know, I'm not jealous at all... With the pace your progressing at you'll be done before the Salt is off the roads! Looking really good

Well today I got it all finished up, now the owner and his Son has the job of taking the cage off and painting it, and they should be ready for the upcoming season

Thank you guys, I try my best and I appreciate your kind words 👍 Yeah that Cat actually is quite heavy, but the most annoying about it is its desire for the camera lense.. must've come from a Hollywood home 😂

No problem mate, probably isn't the right word to use anyways, but it's how far my English reaches I'm afraid 😂

Yeah thats the slug I was referring too that I needed to turn on the lathe. When the slug/insert is in there the bolt should only provide clamping force and fritcion should do the rest, besides load will be greatest if the car was to land on its roof and thats no weaker from it being cut, thats why its cut sort of like a 'Z' As I wrote in the OP this isn't supposed to live up to any rules, it just has to be better than what was there, and be as good as, or better than say a factory Hardtop. And this sure is. This is no Rally car or rockbouncer, and never will be Would like to do it on the roll bar on the Tub as well yes, but its neigh on impossible with the way its made. We did discuss making a completely new cage from scratch, but really it would be overkill for what he needs. And of course be a lot more expensive in labour. Its actually quite impressive how much abuse a Hardtop can take in a rollover, and in any case this might not be mounted much better than that, but it sure won't go flat as easy

Not much done today, but did manage to make the first crossbar which was a right pain as it has to clear the seatbacks The owner wanted to fit his Hi-Lift to the cross bar so I made some tabs for it: And that was it for today

Thanks, well you're welcome if you should ever find yourself with some spare time in our little country Thank you, as per order from the owner But really I sorta persuaded him as well because an internal cage have some advantages that we both like, mainly the ability change around on your roof setup and when the weather is nice, either lay down the windshield or remove it completely. Another reason is we often get close to trees, and while the external would protect against them, it also has a tendency to get hung up on them.

So time for an update! After a quick meeting with the owner we agreed on a solution and I could get to manipulating some steel After a lot of trial and error and even more measuring this is what I got done Friday: So just managed to stuff the 48mm tube in between everything, so quite pleased with the result. Today I fitted another tube to the roof and took off the canvas frame and sticks to lay the windshield down so that I could finish up all the welds. After this I took it outside to get a look: Now I would've preferred less of a slope on the roof bars, but due to constraints from the canvas hood, the height of the windshield and because the main hoop is so tall I could do nothing about it. But looks better with the windshield up: Then I moved on to cutting the cage apart to make it removable, this meant taking off the floor plates to give me access to weld it up properly as well as making room for the cutting tools: This was all repeated at the other side as well afterwards, more of a hassle due to the pedals, but I got there in the end Now I just need to turn some slugs on the lathe which he can put in between the two halves upon reassembly once he has had the cage off for painting. And finally a couple of pictures showing how tight it is Next up is making a cross brace for the main hoop

Today some tube finally arrived! Hope to get cracking tomorrow

Works fine for me as well, but I'm no rivet counter

I wasn't quite done with the bumper yet, have seen too many Series loose the bumper simply from the winch pulling it off due to leverage from sitting too tall. And After seeing this I feared the same could happen here. So after a steel run I made these: And as you can see from the next picture the bumper just can't get any closer to the wings, but still there's quite a lot of wasted space between the winch and the grille.. But hey that's just how it is

Sure, the front is just an ARB 10 spline unit with spacer ring for the Crown wheel and everything else is stock. It will snap a shaft on command, but once you learn to drive around it its pretty reliable unless you loose your mind, but if you're used to drive a Series you know everything about axle preservation right? And the rear is an RD128, again with spacer ring. And with my old trick of using a shortside 110" Salisbury halfshaft in one side, and a late 88" 10/24 halfshaft swapped around at the other side. This way there is only one weak spot, and that's the 10 splined end at one driveflange

Thanks guys, well just to add the front portion really. Going to be two side hoops tied together with a cross bar at the windshield as opposed to the traditional front hoop that goes from one side to the other. This is mainly because the windshield frame is square in the corners on a Series so IMO it looks odd to have round corners on the cage, when seen from the front. Looks good on a Defender though as its already rounded at the windshield Basically this cage is just to save his ar$e in case of a rollover and to fend off the worst trees that might get in the way It wont have to live up to any rules, just common sense