OPERATION: ROCKSTAR
Building A Stadium Rock Sidekick On A Club Band Budget – Part 3
Editor: Eric Bewley Story/Photo: Mike Hagen
COTTAGE GROVE, MN -In our first installment of this series we posed the question How far can you go with a Trackick? In the second part we picked right back up with our builders in the shop for build days three and four. This installement deals with the some of tedious details of building a vehicle as well as the tubing work associated with building the roll cage and chassis. Let’s Join in… shall we?
As many of you may have already guessed, our target of a seven day build may go slightly out of reach. It came down to where do we draw the line. We wanted a cheap, simple build yet durable. Our build will more likely be closer to ten days. Dan and I had a discussion about what we wanted for tube work. We knew that if we took on the amount of tube work that was needed it would blow our 7 day build. To be perfectly honest we were concerned with the quality and safety of amateur tube bending. After some discussion we both agreed that tube work can make or break a rig and opted for a professional.
Day 5 started out with loading up the Rockstar and hauling it to our friend Dave Beffas Garage for some tube bending. Dave has built several tube chassis rigs and understands what make a cage safe. Dave made it look easy. We removed the hood to use it as an outline for our first bend. 
We then proceeded to mount the tube and work around it. 
Dave kept bending and I kept welding. This is a lot more work than I thought. I now realize why bare tube chassis cost so much.
The top is a 6 point cage to the frame.
We started making templates out of cardboard for panels
We traced the cardboard onto some 16 gauge steel and cut it out.
We had planned on purchasing an Anvil for this portion of the build but our buggy budget went into the Moab trip fund. Days 7-? will be about whatever it takes to wrap this project up. Some of these plans include an Anvil, Larger CV upgrade, Paint, and lots of little odds and ends.
Operation Rockstar is well on it’s way to completion in only 6 days work. The body lines are flowing nicely and the tube work is almost complete. Click here to join the Q&A Discussion on the ZUKIWORLD Forum. to discuss this project with the builders and ZUKIWORLD online forum members.
