A couple days ago I bent the front passenger side loop. All was well until the very last (bottom) bend. For the passenger side it would have been okay where it is, but for the driver’s side I felt the bar would be better if it angled more quickly once under the dash so it gave more clearance for the clutch foot.

So, after much hemming and hawing, I bent the driver’s side differently. That turned out better, which meant redoing the passenger side.

You can see a comparison of them below. It’s tough to visualize where the floor/firewall will be, but the sheet metal gives a rough idea.

Once I get the passenger loop done, the remaining bars ought to be completed more quickly.

However, before I could do that Thursday night we discovered a leak underneath the bathroom of our master bedroom. Ugh. We don’t know when it actually broke, but Thursday night, we could hear a strange noise in the bathroom. Of course, we were about ready for bed, which meant getting re-dressed and dropping into our crawl space where I shut off the water to our house. Friday morning I crawled the length of the house, where I discovered where the water was falling on the plastic. The actual break was in the insulation, but I didn’t locate it. I’d rather get a pro to deal with it.

So, we are house-camping again. On the upside, we tried out the shower in our shop for the first time. It turns out, it works great!

We have a plumber (highly recommended and the uncle of our neighbor) coming tomorrow to look at it, as I’d rather not work with the copper pipe. I want to get it done quickly and get it done right … I got a cage to finish!

On Sunday, I was able to tack together the basic structure of the rear portion of the cage. On Monday, I began work on the front portion.

Here’s a look a the back portion with the body sitting on the frame:

There are still a number of small things to do to complete the rear portion (such as adding rear shock mounts, adding some corner supports, and, of course, welding all the connection points).

To properly calculate the two long side bars, which will run from the mid part of the frame back to the rear loop, I needed the body to be sitting on the frame.

Each side bar has four bends, so getting them both the same is a good challenge.

After LOTS of measurements, angle considerations, and design thoughts, I finally got around to bending the two most difficult angles on the side bar. Below you can see the passenger side bar temporarily in position, though the lower two bends haven’t been finished yet (next bend will direct the bar vertically at the dash, then the final bend will redirect the bar forward under the dash where it will attach to a still-to-be-added cross bar.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get as far as I’d hoped, because Ann had a bad migraine, so I had to take the dogs to the groomers (which they needed pretty badly, as bad weather forced us to cancel two previous appts over the past two months).

I expect that by Friday I’ll have all the bars bent, positioned, and maybe even welded.

Bad cows …

I had big plans to work out early and get out to the shop. But, just as I finished my lifting, our neighbor Andrew texted me at 7:30am, “I got a text from my neighbor Dan Green. Your cows are in his pasture.”

Ugh. There went my early start in the shop.

We piled on clothes (below freezing this morning), loaded up the UTV, and headed over to Andrew’s fence line (the cows have been borrowing Andrew’s pasture). Sure enough, the cows had created a nice wide entrance in the wire fence.

The moment the cows heard our UTV, they recognized it was feeding time, so we lured six of them back to Andrews pasture. Of course, one dumb cow, our 7mo steer, couldn’t figure out how to get back through the fence, so, of course, he went over another part of the non-barbed wire fence, damaging it. Ugh.

Once at Andrew’s pasture, we wooed them over to our pasture with food and closed the access gate to Andrew’s place. With the cows grounded, we went to work on the fence.

Thankfully, it didn’t take too long to fix the fence. I.believe our two mischievous 2yo steers (they become meat next month) were leaning over the fence to get some tall grass in Dan Green’s pasture, which caused the fence to collapse. Bad cows.

Now for the cage progress. I’ll skip the explanation (am tired) and just get straight to the pics. The big loop is completed, along with the back bars and the rear cross bar. Everything is, level, square, tacked-in-place, and ready for more bars.

There will be no work on Friday (quick trip to Seattle), but I plan to get back to it this weekend. I’ll add more bars for strength, then begin work on the front loop.