Ok, I had some time to work on my car this weekend. First pic I have is actually from last week- I had only enough time to make a mock up of the side bar that will run along the doors. The cool thing is the door panel armrests have a nice radius that will allow the tubing to tuck underneath it. The only downside is they are not truly parallel (they angle up towards the front) So, this gives me a choice of either running the bar equal to the arm rest (which would have it angle upwards toward the front) or keep it parallel to the rocker panel. I'm choosing the latter to keep more legroom for ingress/ egress.
After making this model I ordered the DOM tubing from a local metal shop (they cut down the 20' lengths for me) and picked it up after work during the week and I thought I was all set to start bending tubing on Friday. I was wrong. My economy Eastwood bender just wasn't up to the task. The u shaped bracket wasn't strong enough. It didn't even have a chance. Trying to bend the 1.75" tubing ripped it apart like aluminum foil. So I spent the rest of the day building a new one out of stronger metal only to discover that even with that, the jack wasn't strong enough to bend the metal. So now I've used the thing 2x, and it has broke 2x. not happy.
Fast forward to today (Sunday) my neighbor Brett (Fab 53) was able to save the day. He helped bend the tubing for me with the proper equipment. It looks beautiful! I also had enough time to make some base plates for the rocker panels. Next weekend I hope to work on trimming the tubing and work on getting this thing installed.
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