Technical > Roo Man's Room

How do i know the cage will fit my size?

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andrewb:

--- Quote from: Keven on June 12, 2014, 01:32:08 PM ---Guys
This is towards Andrew's comment. I would think it would only be half of the 7" between your helmet and roll cage. Gotta consider half that 7" is from the waist down. There is also the leg to body length ratio, can be same height with long or short legs. I'm 6'6" with a car built to my size. A friend about 6'2" has 5" between helmet and cage. As they say results can vary. Won't really know until you hop in.
Keven

--- End quote ---

Doh!

janjon:
Admirable and extraordinary amount of restraint shown in the early going of this thread given strong opinions previously expressed.
I will agree, the SFI specs are well worth the money, very educational.
John

glennadmin:

--- Quote from: gasserx on June 12, 2014, 11:28:31 PM ---Thanks for all the input guys! Buying a complete car is probably the best, but its a big step for me since im not beeing able to have a real look at it first - and i take a big chance by sending a huge lot of dollars to someone i dont know....so...
A nice frame would sure be a good start for one like me :)
You seem to fit in there pretty nice Glenn.

What other options do i have then?
Im trying to keep this to a budget that works with family, and im not going TopFuel! ;)

--- End quote ---
I was very tight, without the suit. 19 inches, the current chassis is 23 inches and with the suit I'm just right

rooman:
I am back from BG Bruce, and catching up.
  Anyone who frequents the front engine dragster pages on Facebook should know my opinions of the Cen-Pen/Worm frames by now. Yes they work (to a degree) and are a starting point for someone who has no experience with front engine dragsters but I have some major issues with various aspects of the frames. They are overly heavy (for no reason except for the fact the Worm seems to have a lot of .095 wall tubing in stock). Heavy does not necessarily mean stronger.
  There are various engineering issues. For example the cross member that the steering box mounts to is attached to the frame with bolts through the tube--no bushings, just a hole drilled through the tube. All that stops this from being REALLY dangerous is the fact that the tube is .095 wall.
  Where the two halves slip together Worm is plugging 1.25 tubing into 1.5 x .095 wall so there is more slop than I would call acceptable. For the uninitiated the norm is to step in 1/8" increments with .058 wall. Do the math and you will see how sloppy the Worm cars are at that point. If the inner tube is not rosetted to the outer (not normally required) I would be worried about fatigue at the point where the step down is welded.
  The torsion bar attachment, if not dangerous, is very "clunky" with much more mass than required. Likewise the pedal package.
    The one that my customer brought to me had the rear end so far forward relative to the back of the cockpit that the driver needed to slide his butt way forward to get his legs to hang over the rear axle housing, leaving the lower part of his back arched and unsupported.
  The motor mount tabs are about 5" froward of what is nominally the motor mount upright so the mid plate does not act as a firewall and having the motor plate in the middle of an unsupported section of tubing is again poor engineering practice. Once again the .095 tubing is all that lets him get away with it.
  The entire car is designed to be simple and quick to build (from Worm's end) as the cockpit diagonals are notched to fit the uprights only rather than in the corner of the bay intersecting the main rails as well. Some builders have been known to do this to promote chassis flexibility but with all 1.5 x .095 tubing that is not happening here. The front of the chassis is the same, rather than notch the rails to bring the overall height down to just over the torsion bar diameter (which is the traditional way to do it) Worm adds his rings and doubler plates to make it quick for him to put together.
  The chassis is very shallow top to bottom which can put the steering cross member too close to the transmission in some applications. It also can make it necessary to pull the cross member to pull the transmission.
 I might understand if the first cars were like this and later ones showed some improvement but they are all the same with the same issues and John claims to have built 150 of them.
  One of the other talking points on Facebook was the cost of the cars but Worm's cars are not really much cheaper than most of those built by more respected builders. The fact that you can buy a car in stages is a plus but if you use his spread sheet and add all the options to get to the same stage as a Neil and Parks base car there really is not a substantial difference in the bottom line. Everyone has to start out somewhere but every builder that I respect continually works hard to improve their product but I do not see that happening with the Cen-Pen cars.

Roo

fuel749:
I just had a worm car in here, and tend to agree with everything Roo says. I can say however that the steering cross member was slugged with solid rounds and drilled through that for attaching to the chassis. General servicability was terrible however. I could see if these were bargain basement cars, but if you buy all the stuff from him to get to the same level of finish as most builders you're paying about the same. The problem with new buyers is an "thats how they are" mentality, meaning they don't look much past the paint job in judging a car and just assume that that's how all these cars are built. It's not until they've owned a few cars from various builders that they can appreciate the differences and thought that some guys put into the finished product.

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