What a Volvo can handle 2

[Chubb]

This my car from 2008 that I got second place with, it is my most damaged car to date but still ran fine and drove alright.


This is before, as you can see the car had already done a derby the year before.


and after

I ended up putting the water pump through the radiator



In this picture the rear bumper is still in its original position, so you can see just how much the boot moved.




And this was the car I got for a mate the same year and he got third.

before:


after:

[JaCe]

LOLOLOL nice!

[Josh_Emerton]

X on the drivers door mean 'dont hit here'?

Meanwhile, thats freaking sweeeeet. I'd love to get into that lol, looks heaps fun.

[Chubb]

I will find a picture of my drivers door, I ended up with two very large tears in the door from being hit by other drivers. It was my own fault but, I had a blown a few seals in the motor in this derby so the car was blowing that much smoke that at one point I was spun around and could not see the bonnet or the boot. The problem seemed to fix itself when the engine finally pumped out all or it oil.

[Mizta B]

Nice!!!
I used to crew for several Demo derby drivers before I had a license
Insane fun
The ovlovs held up pretty well....

[spunkybob]

ok... how do you get into this?

[Chubb]

For the last 20years or so every town in the local area here has had a demo derby and I have always been a petrol head living on the farm all my life. To get a car ready all I do is find a very cheap Volvo (my weapon of choice, I have had three now) I strip out any glass and anything that could burn, then seam weld all the doors, remove the fuel tank and replace it with a 5L can where the back set used to be.

Finally I add an A frame roll cage behind the seat to stop it breaking and to stop the roof collapsing in a rollover (yes they do happen), I also run some very large steel bars on the inside of the drivers door to protect my legs.

[DavidAnthony]

What are the chances of getting injured doing this?
Do you have to do any type of training to prevent injuries?

Every car crash I have seen where the car looks that bad usually put someone in hospital for a while or worse.

[spunkybob]

lol.... whats the worse that can happen.

[Chubb]

In four years of doing it I have only had one minor injury when I forgot to pad a dash support near my leg causing a large bruise but other then that nothing.

In terms of training there is none but we all must have a current drivers license and all must be under the limit.

To stop us getting to much speed we are only allowed to run within a circle that is about 50 - 80 meters in diameter for 15-20 cars, so or top speed would be 30km/h maybe 40 at tops.

As part of the rules we must have a bar to support the roof in case of a roll over but me I go far beyond this because personally I like my legs and I like walking.

If I get a chance today I will draw a pic of my roll cage some of it can be seen in the above pics. It starts as an aframe behind the seat which bolts to the floor and roof it also stops the seat from breaking which can happen. Then as some extra protection I then run a bar from this A frame accross the top of the drivers door, down the windscreen then it bolts to the floor near the go peddle protecting my feet. I then run two more bars from this bar back to the A frame where my hip is so in the event of a heavy impact the bars take it not my hip. Finally I use a heap of foam on every steel surface I am likely to hit, I find that foam pool noddles with a slit cut in them are the best to rap around the steel posts.

In case you are wondering I use 6mm think high strength grade steel in my role cage, better to be safe then sorry and of course we wear helmets and cotton overalls.