1990 Marathon rebuilt with roll cage

[H2xed]

Here is the old 90 all rebuilt and ready to hit the road. It was a basket case that the PO beat to death..literally...with a golf club...

[H2xed]

A few more shots. we built the cage by hand. Used PVC plastic to come up with the design. that stuff works great, fill it with hot sand, and it molds to any shape pretty easy. Then take that to the tube bending shop for a nice pattern. Notched and welded the bent tubes together then.
Lots of dent removal, sanding, priming. Two coats of base and three coats of clear. 2010 Camaro silver.
4 inch spindle lift with another two in a block lift in front. HD springs put on the front. EZ TXT front light bar mounted to a custom built tube support welded to the frame.

[dylan schumacher]

thats awesome

[TheNewGuy]

Nice work!! Really looks great.

[smallblock450sl]

Great job, you should feel proud

[RSP]

Great job on the roll bar, like it!!!!!!!!!

[mooneyes]

now that's one of the nicest looking marathons i have ever seen great work

[brylee]

nice work...

can you elaborate a little more on how you modeled up the pvc? you stated hot sand?

i have a 92 that i would like to fix up.

also you stated that you have a 4" spindle lift...but you added a 2" block lift? was this tough, and what did you come up with for the back, assuming you needed 6", correct?

[H2xed]

The sand and PVC method works like this. I took 10 foot long pieces of PVC pipe and filled it with sand that was heated in a cake pan in our house oven. Heat to about 250 (takes about 15 minutes). Cap one end of the PVC pipe, and pour the hot sand in the other using a funnel. This sand does two things, it makes the PVC pipe become very flexible, and it provides internal support so the pipe does not collapse when being bent. I used various round items like buckets to get the desired bend radius.
Then you can test fit this to the cart and do any small tweaking on the cart using a heat gun.
The reason I had to add more lift the front of the cart is because it has 23 inch wheels. Needed more clearance when making hard turns over the rough stuff (yeah we wheel it hard off road). The Jakes spindle lift is a new front axle and rear spacers, and if you look close you can see the 2 inch blocks added over the front axle. Those are just 2 inch tall pieces of 2 1/2 pipe. Look up on this site to see examples of home made block lifts. The added lift in the front really did not make the cart unlevel. The rear springs on these carts are pretty stiff and don't sag any. I have more pics if you need some close ups.

[H2xed]

I forgot to mention on the PVC pipe, once all your bends are made, you simply glue your cage all together using PVC tee joints and PVC glue. Then take that to a machine shop that has a tubing bender and have it reproduced. I had them use 2 inch diameter tubing.
I tell you it was all new to me, never built a cage or cart before, use this site to its fullest to find examples. And google you tube for videos on PVC pipe bending.
Thanks, Brian.