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Integrating an exo cage into the body

i imagine this looking like the blazer's "bones" are pushing through the doors. ha. might look cool. but, i must say that altering the sheetmetal so that it doesn't get altered (damaged) in another way is sort of a funny concept. square tube would probably be easier to work with, but i doubt it would look as cool.
 
I would think it would be hard to weld this together (either scenerio) without having the sheetmetal warp from the heat. :dunno:
 
vortec said:
i imagine this looking like the blazer's "bones" are pushing through the doors. ha. might look cool. but, i must say that altering the sheetmetal so that it doesn't get altered (damaged) in another way is sort of a funny concept. square tube would probably be easier to work with, but i doubt it would look as cool.
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I really hate to cut on this thing. I may be building sets of sliders that bolt to the body. It would have to be three separate sets for each side. One for the front fender, door, and rear. That seems to be the easy way to do it. I would still have to drill through the body, but that is a lot less invasive than burning both sides.
 
There used to be a older ford bronco (like 85ish) that the guy had put thin diamond plate skins on the sides of the truck. He then put small pipe on the edges,maybe 3/4" pipe. Think of pipe frame around the doors and bedsides and fenders, with diamond plate insert panels. It looked pretty MAD MAX cool and held up well but I have no idea how he did it. He also miniaturized a 48 international pickup and a older ford corrier(sp) pick up(you know the late 70's mazda with ford badging) He does trick work, but never finishes anything. The curved sides of a GM may be a little harder to do as the ford was semi flat surfaces.

I do think the upper body line would be cool with half tube over it. Then again I like the "differnt" stuff.
 
Here is a picture. The pieces are tack-welded on so very little distortion. I think if you put less strips on it, like just along the body seams, it would blend in pretty well but obviously not offer as much protection. This was definitely a function over form decision, and as already mentioned it works really well.

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If you can find pics of Kurt Boldens orange jimmy, (ttc 03) he had sliders at the body line from the from to the back. It was 3 pieces, one front fender, one door and one rear fender.

I tried finding a pic but came up empty. Maybe someone will have a pic they can post.
 
I was thinking about doing an integrated exo cage aswell... But I would build it at the same time as boat siding the burb.

I like the idea of having an integrated cage. You keep your body relatively straight, and you get the safety of a cage, and the cage doesn't invade your interior as much...

Or am I thinking stupid? Can an integrated exo cage work the same as an internal roll cage? (If properly built, and designed that is)
 
6.2Blazer said:
Here is a picture. The pieces are tack-welded on so very little distortion. I think if you put less strips on it, like just along the body seams, it would blend in pretty well but obviously not offer as much protection. This was definitely a function over form decision, and as already mentioned it works really well.

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That is wild how the body is just totally thrashed and the door looks straight. Has he wheeled with the doors off or do the bars protect that well?
 
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here is a pic of a members rig that has the diamond plate from the body line down on the back side of the rig, looks pretty sharp, but i think it would pretty hard to curve it.. anyways maybe this could give u some other options..
exostart2.jpg


102-0289_IMG.jpg
 
k5 krawler 50 said:
here is a pic of a members rig that has the diamond plate from the body line down on the back side of the rig, looks pretty sharp, but i think it would pretty hard to curve it.. anyways maybe this could give u some other options..
exostart2.jpg


102-0289_IMG.jpg
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Thats the way that bronco was, only he had the small pipe around the edges of the diamond plate
 
DPI said:
That is wild how the body is just totally thrashed and the door looks straight. Has he wheeled with the doors off or do the bars protect that well?
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He has never wheeled with the doors off, so yes the bars protect them that well. They are the second set of doors he's had (originals without the bars got trashed quickly), but he's wheeled these pretty hard for awhile now and I'm sure he has had more potential body damage than what the originals ever saw before becoming completely unusable. He has zero regard for the body but just wanted the doors to remain functional (still open and close, and keep the window).
 
Its been done. 2002 and I cannot remember the guys nick or name. He was from Florida. If some of the old trip reports are still in the members forums start looking for Tellico 2002 or 2003. He came up for one of the East coast Blazer events. in 2001 the truck was acid green and very clean. By 2002 or 2003 it was boatsided with soft doors and tubed fender bars. then not long after that he bobbed it. It had a LOT of firsts. The boat side, bobb and soft doors were all firsts on a K5 on this truck.

Year later it got parted.

Search "Tellico Depdog"

If BigJBear is still lurking he will know who I am talking about.
 
I messed around with doing an intergrated cage on a toyota. Cut the sheetmetal and put the tube half inside and half outside. It takes alot of planning. I mean alot to make sure you have enough room on the inside for the tube. On a blazer it shouldn't be too big of a deal. The one tube I did ended up having about 6 bends( in about 4 ft) of not very many degrees. With a little more time it could have looked very cool. And I did fully weld it just tacked like you would do with body work. If you have any joints they are going to be tricky to get fully welded but having the extra support of the body should be enough
 
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