I cant believe this.... I'm so upset
 

After all the work I went through to find a shop to fabricate my SFCs and giving up my car for the past 3 days I get this e-mail message...




hey josh
sorry it has taken sometime to get back to you but it has been crazy
but i wanted to call you but again the phones have been messing up due to the rain we have a flood at the end of our road
but i think that i am going to pass on this job i priced it out and with the added material and welding everything in i can't come close to your price
and there is just a lot of work involved in it and this is my busy time i can't make it happen
john
sorry to tie up your time and car


He already said he was gonna do this job, even raised the price to 400$ and we agreed. Also said he would have it done between Wed and Fri. And now I get this message.

I'm dissapointed to say the least... and I dont even have a ride to go over there and get my car.. I'm probably gonna end up getting a cab...

so pissed...

Unless you want something complicated, SFC's are a relatively simple thing to fabricate and install. Find another shop and you should be fine. I would have given a shop 2 days at most to let me know whether or not they could fabricate some SFC's for my car or not. Sounds like they took a lot longer and didn't come through in the end. Don't let that happen again - take it to a well known and respected shop and don't leave until they can tell you whether or not they can get it done. And if you really want some SFC's, you have to pay to play (even though they may be relatively simple to make, it's usually 2 hours of labor to get them installed, and at least 2 more hours of labor to design/fabricate. And, while 4 hours at $100/hour sounds like a lot of time for simple fabrication/installation, it really isn't when you consider what other parts of your car would take to install, let alone build from scratch.)

They accepted the job and then pulled out on me 3 days later. I was under the impression that they were already bending tube

those guys are pvssies....Piper Motorsports here quoted me "under $200" for Stage 1 sfc's (using tubular tubes), and they are the BEST frame/rollcage shop in the area. I'm betting the square tubing propbably costs more than regular old round steel stock though....

Nope square tubing is generally considered cheaper and heavier... I already made about 5 calls. There is a guy locally who does completly custom classics. But it looks kinda like a mom and pops shop... plus they dont usually work on newer cars.

And then I called a shop that is well known around New England for building tube chassis called tube chassis designz. I brought my car to their shop last winter and asked them how this would help handling to which the guy responded (And I kidd not) "I dont know anything about handling, I just make cars go as fast as possible in a straight line" at which point I left. Now they are known for making some incredible quarter mile machines and certainly have the skill to produce exactly what I want but I have to go to them with exact diagrams.

Neither shop is really perfect but both could probably get the job done...

I found a shop that looks promising. I called a couple companies who rent out full race prepped cars and I got the number of a place called precision motorsports. They are pretty far away but SFCs seem right up their ally.

http://www.precisionmotorsports.com/index-1.html#

Man this process is wearing on me.... not to mention I'm getting a little tired of the reaction I get when I tell them the SFCs are for a maxima.

Reading through this thread, im intrigued.

SFC= steel frame chassis? Or something like it?

roll bar/cage for the maxima?

why? what benefits does it have?

Sub Frame Connectors. They weld to the chassis as a sort of bracing, making the whole chassis stiffer. It helps handling but really it helps the ride of the car espedially if someone is running stiffer springs.

Part of the reason european cars ride so well is because they have the stiffest chassis on avg from the factory, this does the same thing, only for the maxima

Well it looks like precision motorsports is the right type of place to build this sort of thing but like most good shops they are crazy busy. They might not be able to get around to my car for a couple weeks.

are you having them add to your Warpspeed setup, or just fabricate something totally new? since they dont make the warpspeed ones anymore, as far as i can tell, id need a shop to fabricate them entirely like you.

These are completly custom. I dont have SFCs

Where are they, what town? The only info on their site is their phone number

Here you go:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%28...&cop=&ei=UTF-8

They are located in Milford, Ma. Let me know if you wanna get your car done with me. It would be better if we got a few done at the same time. ALso if you have aftermarket exhaust and/or headers, y-pipe that would be great because then we could design them from the beginning to clear your exhaust.


Cause right now I plan to do a catback exhaust and headers at some point but I dont have them on yet and I am taking a risk because these SFCs could potentially not clear the aftermarket stuff and I could get screwed with having to create a second set of SFCs for myself when I get the headers and catback