Started removing interior....

[SHO92]

Adding a roll cage doesn't require moding the floor pan of the car. The cage can be made to go around a fuel cell, but that is all extra work that would not normally be required.

Eric, is there a reason that you know of for why Bondurant added a fuel cell? I assume the capacity is smaller then the factory tank as well.

Speaking of capacities, if you really wanted to save weight with a smaller amount of fuel, you could always replace the SHO fuel tank for the smaller one that came in some SLOs. I believe the capacity on them is ~14 gallons versus the 18 in the SHO. I think thats around a 28lb weight savings, gas is 7 pound a gallon I think.

 

[Shoaz]

Eric, is there a reason that you know of for why Bondurant added a fuel cell? I assume the capacity is smaller then the factory tank as well.

I'm not sure on the capacity as I've not had to fill it yet.

I don't know why the cars were specced the way they were. If Todd shows up around here again he might know more. I'm assuming it was just a safety spec that the school and Ford (and maybe the school's insurance carrier) agreed to. FWIW, ten years ago when I was attending there all of the student (Mustang) and instructor cars (SHOs) had fuel cells.

I do think that they spec cars differently for whether they'll only be on the autox and skid pad areas rather than the track. When we were working with them to purchase the Pumpkins I asked about the new Caddys since none of them even had cages in them. Their response was that with the V6s those cars were too slow to do anything useful with on the track so they were only used on the paddock/autox area, hence no cages.

It also seems like they're not quite as tight about the cars these days as they used to be, perhaps their agreement with GM is stingier, I don't know. The next time I'm down there I'll try to get a peek at the Corvette student cars and see how much prep work they've had. The Mustangs and SHOs all had cages, fuel cells, and Halon fire systems in them. I'm not sure that GM has been springing for all that equipment on their new student cars or not. FWIW it looks like they're still using the Cobra Vics for instructor cars...maybe GM hasn't ponied up for CTS-V instructor cars yet.

 

[nc89sho]

 

[SHO92]

Thats Ian putting his Wilwoods back on the car, LOL. Hes 6'5" so he does contort into weird positions every now and then while working on the car, but thats by far the weirdest I've seen him do.