Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

I was thinking the other day; sprint car chassis' haven't really changed in the past 15 years.

It's time for a change.

Almost everything on a sprint car has gotten better/lighter/ faster - improved over the last 15 years except for the chassis. Probably the biggest change to a chassis has been the addition of the optional safety bars to them.

Think about it, the brakes are better, thus alowing you to go faster. The motors are better, tires are way better. Hell, guys are still breaking records on spec tires.

Guys are wearing head & neck restraints and full containment seats. This is a good idea, but what good is it if your CAGE COLLAPSES?

I don't remember the last time I heard about a cage coming down on a guy in NASCAR. It shouldn't be happening in sprint cars either.

Here are a few photos from just this season already. One is Chad Humston's car and the other is TK's from Knoxville.

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Scary thing is plenty of cages have been ripped part prior to 2K7, arguably not a new thing. But then, seen enough crashes and some quite nasty, the cage appears to be just as square as the day it was welded in the jig. Which is a very good thing.

Sure some physics guru or message board expert with a good search engine cut-and-paste can explain why in some violent crashes the car is bent and torn apart versus another wicked crash and the only thing needing replaced is perhaps the jacobs ladder, misc. suspension and wings...

Would feel certain-the manufacturers are well aware of the issues needed to maintain a safe product. Like the manufacturers want another KSE type settlement with a driver due to a faulty product. Unless a driver is using some car from 'Goobers Garage', thr major manufactures have a safe product.

What kind of car was Chad Humston in?

Sprint Cars Do It On Dirt!

Here's a picture (I hope it works) of some kind of frame I found while looking on ebay. It reminds me of a funny car or pro-stock drag car that has a "cage within a cage" I had never seen anything quite like this, it may be a step in the right direction?? Sprint cars are probably the most dangerous dirt racing next to flat track motorcycles, but hopefully there wont have to be another tragic crash to get people to start thinking and keep developing.

Chad Humston's was a Maxim. He flipped and then another car T boned him.

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slow_sprinter, I believe Charlie Fisher had a design very similar to that quite a few years ago if my memory serves me right.  Next time I talk to him I'd like to ask him why he abanded it.

Wonder why more people didn't do the same?............ Oh wait a minute, extra tubing means extra weight.  Silly me

Exactly, Kelly. But in today's world of minimum weight rules, one would hope that the weight issue wouldn't matter as much to the teams as it had in the past.

With that said, there is still the issue of reducing weight above the center of gravity, which is a category the rollcage certainly falls into. How thick is the rollcage tubing (not the rest of the chassis, just the cage) in most sprint cars, .120 wall? Is there ANY reason why it couldn't be a slightly thicker material? I would think that the cage is one place that isn't designed to be a crumple zone, or to absorb the energy of an impact.

I understand that racing is inherently dangerous, and that these cars can't be built like tanks, but surely .040 thicker tubing just in the cage couldn't matter that much in the weight, or the roll center, of the car. Then maybe we wouldn't see the cages being ripped apart from a massive impact with another car.

Afterall, isn't the driver's safety the most important thing built into ANY racecar?

I beleive Chris Schmelze from Canada races a chassis very similar to the one pictured. I am not positive but at the Nationals last year I noticed his car had that type of look to it. On ascsracing.com Chris's chassis is listed as a lejeune, which I have never heard of.

I was at I-80 for Chad Humstoms wreck and no matter how thick that chassis tubing would have been, or what brand of chassis, his cage would still look like it did.

Granted, XXX has only been building chassis for one year, but here are some observations …

It's actually the racers and teams that dictate the industry/chassis, not the manufacturers. Unless it's a mandated rule, racers appear to rarely want to change what they are comfortable with (and have invested a lot of time and money to figure out).

We surveyed a lot of teams when designing our chassis, and most said they did not want safety bars nor halos. But, we (being ex-racers ourselves) put safety first, and ignored our own research. We made our chassis standard with both. Our research turned out to be correct; very few racers/teams wanted the halo (so we were forced to make it optional). And many ask for the cars without safety bars.

We sell a 2" taller car for only $50 more than a regular height chassis, but sell 10 to 1 regular height. The 2" gives the driver a lot more room from the top of his helmet to the top of the cage (and a bigger zone of safety all the way around), but it just doesn't seem popular in the US (much more accepted in AUS).

Teams/drivers are more concerned with chassis flex, weight, clear vision, not being obstructed on exit during a fire (etc) than having more tubes and confinement in the cockpit. And we, as a company, need to supply to racers what they want. To really initiate a change, it's the responsibility of the sanctioning bodies.

I believe Chris makes his own chassis on the Island

Brian 

"TURN AROUND; MATE !"

I talked to Chris at Magnolia, MS a couple of weeks ago. He is a chassis builder at Lejeune. I didn't notice anything overly unique about his chassis, but it was pretty late.

Greg

Chris

Chris has been building cars for Lejeune performance in Victoria BC, for about the last ten years. They've been building sprint chassis's (sprints both dirt and pavement as well as usac cars). Their cars are known for their halo type bars in the top of the cage structure. You can check Chris's website at: www.chrisschmelzleracing.com .

bryan

Nicely put. The sanctioning bodies are the ones who have to act. Racers are their own worst enemies many times. Most fought the weight rule tooth and nail even though many of them now realize it's necessity, even though it's still too hard to make weight. I still see way too much bolt on titanium, and ideas above like a .120 wall upper rail still aren't really feasible even for those who want to try it because of weight. Likewise you're always going to have yahoos out there who are DEAD set that safety bars or a halo will make a frame too stiff, even though some of the fastest cars in the country run them, unless a sanctioning body steps in. At least it looks like Advantage seats are replacing ones that used to look like swiss cheese however, and paper thin bladders are likewise going by the wayside. Baby steps I guess...lol. (Thank goodness they didn't make them run a smaller tire and do away with one race motors...you'd really hear some hoot'n and holler'n then...lol.)

 
 
 
They don't even know how to spell sprint car 
much less chromoly...http://www.ycmco.com

No explaination needed other than he was lucky and walked away. Thank God he went forward in his belts on impact.

Member of this message board since 1997

Hawker, we shouldn't be seing stuff like that! Yes, I know sprint cars and their drivers are rough & tumble, but I've been around a lot of dirt tracks that race all kinds of classes, and mostly sprint cars are the ones you see that have cages break.

I've had cars with safety bars, and I didn't really care for them. They did take some chassis flex out and were hard to get in and out of.

Knoxville rules are 1 1/2" x .095 tubing for the top rails (down tubes and sides of cage). I would have to think that if they were made of 1 5/8 or .120 that they would be quite a bit stronger.

Someone said Humston was t-boned and that's why the cage broke. I still say it shouldn't be that way. Nascar guys get hit ate 200 and the cages are intact. Indy cars get hit at 200 and yes, the monocoque may get separated from the rest of the car, but it stays intact. And it's made of carbon fiber!

When I see some of these cars I have to think these guys are ultra lucky, or Jesus goes to the races too!

Basically, what I am trying to say in this thread is we have improved EVERYTHING on a sprint car over the last 15 years except the part that really matters; the cage. The cars are going faster than they ever have and the cages haven't gotten any better. Make sense to you?

20 years from now will we be wondering what on earth we were thinking using .095 tubing to keep guys alive?

www.Numbersusa.com  

Wesmar.....you are right...I would bet that is Charlie's car..it had a sweet designed cage of a top fueler car. I had thought I'd heard he was friends with or worked with Jim Head on the cage design....Jim Head ran top fuel dragsters from Columbus.

Russ Lejeune is in Victoria, British Columbia and has been building sprint car chassis for many years.

http://www.profilecanada.com/companydetail.cfm?company=2235527_Lejeune_Engineering_Victoria_BC

well we are going on ten years now how are we progressing on this subject?

The pictures up top show a bad welding program. That is not heating up the chassis after welding to get rid of welding stress points.

Now days most of the welds hold up fine around the cage. It's the chassis are not wide enough to protect the drivers head during side impacts...