Things have really been coming along here in the powerTV garage as we almost have our Chassis Engineering 10-pt roll cage completed. As mentioned, we are converting it to a 25.5 spec cage with the addition of some extra chromoly bars. Our fabricator – Mike Ryan – has been doing an excellent job throughout the entire build of our “Grandma.” We last left off with Mike bending the necessary bars for the funny car cage portion of our build. Since then he has finished the funny car cage required for the 25.5 SFI spec, and has moved on to the door “X” bars. When you order your roll-cage kit from Chassis, you can specify any of these additional bars to be included, from a Funny Car cage conversion to “X” bars in the doors.

Here is the “X” in the doors. These are just tack-welded at this point and can be removed for access to the interior.

Next it was on to the front of the car where Mike was working on the front cage extensions that would run to the front of the G-Body’s front frame rails. This would strengthen the front of the car substantially. You can see the finished work below. These tie into the cage at the front intersection bar that goes between the two front down bars.

We expect Grandma to run in the 8-second zone, which means we are going to need a little stopping help. While we did upgrade the brakes to Aerospace Components lightweight drag racing brakes, a parachute was still needed given the speed of the car.

Mike installed a Chassis Engineering Parachute Mount Kit on our Malibu. He started by drilling a circle the size of the 1-5/8-inch tubing into the bumper of the car. From there he notched and cut the bar down to the correct size before tacking it to the rear cross bar we had installed a few weeks ago.

Mike added some bracing to the bar as well to make sure the parachute system is structurally strong before adding the actual parachute mount to the rear of the bar behind the bumper.

Welding the parachute holder bar (is there a better word for this) to the Chassis Engineering mount kit. Check outthe parachute mount kit here.

That wraps up this update. Check back later this week and we should have our 555 ci Pat Musi/Edelbrock Chevy Big Block mocked up in the car. From there we can them move on to reassembly as we continue to keep you up to speed on Project Grandma.