Time to cage the beast

Less than two days after we hit the ground running, Team Skoda Carsales' RS-P tarmac rally car was on the move -- on a trailer. It was heading for FABRaiCATIONS: a specialist rollcage and racecar fabrication business established by keen rally and circuit racer, Rai Curry.

Curry started the business in 1996 after first becoming an importer of the specialist steel and chrome-moly tube used in motorsport rollcages. FABRaiCATIONS now builds cages for some of the country's top race and rally teams as well as assisting companies like General Motors by fabricating the safety cages used in 'mules' used during the development of both the VE Commodore and the new Chevrolet Camaro.

In addition to rollover protection, FABRaiCATIONS builds other custom motorsport parts including fuel tanks, Watt's link components, flared guards and wheel tubs, sump, diff and tank guards.

"Anything to do with the chassis, not drivetrain," says Curry.

Not surprisingly Team Skoda Carsales' was the first Octavia to grace Curry's Braeside (Vic) workshop -- though not the first Volkswagen Audi Group vehicle. Literally days before the RS-P arrived Curry's team finished work on the cages for two Audi TT-RS coupes also heading to Targa (see more below).

Using their extensive experience, and the most recent exposure to the in-some-part-similar layout of the five-cylinder TT-RS, Curry and master fabricator, Greg Martin, designed the cage for the RS-P in two days.  And nine very long working days later it was finished -- a work of art in a mix of high-strength and chrome-moly steel tube that deftly snaked in and out of the Octavia's standard dash and trim. Somehow, despite having to fit deep double tube side intrusion protection, Curry and Martin even managed to retain the Octavia's standard front door trims -- including the cavernous (and very handy) door pockets.

Our RS-P's cage is a mix of 1020 mild steel CDW (cold drawn welded) and 4130 ChomeMoly (CrMo) Cold Drawn Seamless tube. At 60kg its around 10kg heavier than the fully chrome moly cages used in some 'price is no object' rally cars but up to 20kg lighter than a full mild steel jobbie would be. It's also stronger.

Curry said he uses a "combination of rules and experience" to decide how he'll put a cage together in a 'new' car like RS-P.

With the abovementioned massive side intrusion protection, the RS-P's cage is effectively designed to protect the occupants (Justin and me!) with minimum contribution from the car's normal body-in-white. When the cage is then securely welded and 'tabbed' to combined structurally with the Skoda's main structure (based on Golf 5 and one of the strongest in the Volkswagen Audi world) the result is immensely strong.

"We consider the most important characteristics is the cage should be as close to the bodywork/chassis as practicable and work with the body/chassis rather than being [just] a secondary structure."

"If you look at the structure we have built in the Skoda, it has gussets at many of the junctions and is 'tagged' to the body/chassis. If you use a bolt-in cage, the ability to do this is drastically reduced, and because of this a bolt-in rollcage doesn't work with the body/chassis which can result in a badly damaged -- irreparable -- car but a re-usable cage. It hasn't fully done its job -- and if the accident is one step worse, the cage is left to do all the work on its own..."

Rai says the cage was not difficult to build -- "but time consuming."

He reckons: "the most difficult car we have done lately would have been the Audi TT-RS' full CrMo cage in a very aluminium [heavy] car. Two-door cars are difficult and coupes are the worst."

It's the attention to detail that sets this cage apart from the 'average' installation... The sort of attention to detail that is apparent in spades in the work carried out by PPE and FabRAIcations alike.

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