I burned all of last weekend building a cage on someone else’s car and paid for the privilege to do so. Our instructor was John Pagel, the evil genius of Evil Genius Racing, but he might sometimes go by Tom Sawyer as well. Nine of us met up at the Bay Area wrenching co-op Rack Hack Shop to learn John’s methods for building a cage and use his professional-grade tools to do so. The bulk of the attendees focused on Jeff’s Willys Aero (future) LeMons car while myself, Jeff and Gene teamed up on to put a Rally America spec cage in a 2007 Yaris. Owner Ian was cool enough to volunteer his car for a “haircut at the barber college” discounted cage.
Not unlike many of our readers, most of us could weld passably and could probably flail our way to completing a mail-order you-weld-it kit cage or slap one together with “hobby” grade bending and notching equipment. Of course, it’d take us two months and the results would be iffy at best. John walked us through his methods for where to start and how to measure for bends and notches that demystify the process…


However, out of both laziness and courtesy, I’m not going to repeat everything here. You need to take the class for that, and there will be future classes.
For me the biggest gains were welding coaching/practice, a systematic way to lay out main and down-bars and (most of all) learning which things were crucial versus which weren’t worth sweating over. Hearing “yeah, just give that bend about two inches of stickout by eye” saved me five minutes of precision measuring I assumed I needed. After taking this class, I know I’m in a position to make my own cage, provided I’ve got access to a high-end notcher and bender. Luckily for me as a fabricator and you as a reader, John and I will be working out an arrangement shortly…

Personally, I’d like to thank Jeff and the rest of the Rat Hack Shop crew for facilitating the class in the Bay Area, my teammates Jeff and Gene for being awesome to work with and of course John for packing up five tons of metal, car, and equipment into his trailer and burning a weekend with us low-lifes.