Tubing?

How is everybody getting tubing for roll cages and reinforcements. Has metal prices skyrocketed since covid or something?

Buy in bulk, and then only budget the percentage that you utilize. 

Yes they have gone up significantly.  Others have bought scrap cages from old race cars and reused the tubing.  I traded my labor for tubing right at the start of Covid and I'm treating this cheap tubing as gold.

I bought all new in Jan of 2020.  I used a combination of a local supplier (Champaign IL) as well as Shapiro Supply and Wicks Aircraft both in STL.  My Challenge car had ~$750 of New Steel and aluminum sheet in it which is Quite a bit.  Prices have gone up quite a bit unfortunately and I am not sure I could build the car again starting today.  The rollbar tube is ~170% of what I paid today, and the rest of the chassis steel seems to be between 150-300% of what I paid.

That said there a few tricks with buying steel that can help you save $$.   

First is to buy what the particular supplier sells volume of and be willing to drive a little to find different suppliers for differnt tube shapes.  Steel prices tend to be adjusted based on volume of any given dimension of tube.  So find the guy that does lots of NHRA chassis work if what you need is NHRA tube (Shapiro in the MW sells a bunch of NHRA spec 4130 tube apparently).  My local shop did a bunch of volume in 1x1 16ga and Shapiro couldn't touch their price.  My local place did high volume in DOM and could beat other suppliers prices but in sizes that where appropirate for Handrails and Circle track cars but not NHRA or SCCA spec. 

Second buy FULL Sticks.  Shapiro Advertised prices for Cut tube are 10-15% more per ft then they are for a full stick (It varies, call them and call your local supplier thats what it was when I bought).  I've brought a cordless Sawzall to the vendor to save on Cut charges as some do a flat % fee for cuts, some do a per piece fee, but you can agree that $0 for you to do it in the parkinglot is less then anything they charge.   

Look for the wierd deals and be willing to make things work if they aren't perfect but a good price.  Wicks has lots of sizes of 4130 tube for $0.50/ft.  These sizes are very thickwall and there doesn't seem to be reason for it, but It was sizes that I could make work for pullrods and suspension bushings so I used this size vs what I wanted.  

Ask about Offcuts.  Generally they want to keep full sticks as they fit on their rack.  anything below ~5' seems to just get scrapped so they typically will sell these for good values.  

If you don't need a specific size, off-cuts are a great deal. Even big brands like Metal Supermarkets have an off-cuts area (though they don't advertise it) where they sell everything under 8ft and you pay by the pound.

Look at other names of suppliers. It's chrome moly, but named pro moly. It seems to be the goto steel for SFI chassis by all the drag racing chassis people I know and follow... It was cheaper and USA made.

In reply to Ranger50 :

Is Pro Moly the same thing as Docol R8?  They both claim to exceed 4130 specs.  I know someone that did their cage our of Docol but if was $3-4 more expensive.  For a real project it's probably worth it because apparently it is a dream to work with.  

Current steel prices dismay me mainly because it is probably barely possible to build a tube frame challenge car like mine that has a sufficient cage for a life post challenge.   I could do it but it would be tight.  

Even with today's prices I am confident though that you could build a challenge legal tube frame for about $600.  It would just have a minimum roll bar vs a full cage which limits what can be done post challenge life.  

nocones said:
Is Pro Moly the same thing as Docol R8? 

No.

Pro-Moly is a proprietary alloy of Plymouth Tube in the 4130 spec range. In my experience it is generally slightly more expensive than other MIL spec 4130's, and I have found no advantage working with it.

Docol R8 is a completely different alloy being marketed as a 4130 alternative. It is a seam tube and at least one sanctioning body has changed the language of thier rules to allow chassis to be constructed with it. I again found no advantage working with it that justified the extra cost.

I've got less than $150 in my tube chassis. The rectangular and square tube was purchased off Craigslist pre-Covid and was new tube, although I think it was all drops. I bought it for $0.80-$0.95 per foot. Everything else (all the round tubing) is re-purposed from other cages, the one that was in the car , two others bought off of FB Marketplace for cheap.

I liked whoever said it on the last rollcage complaining thread, that the ones complaining about cage materials aren't the ones going fast enough to need one 

it seems ridiculous to me to buy new metal for a challenge car even at pre-2020 pricing. My BMW full cage is in the budget at $170 (which is what I paid for it) and it could not have been built for even twice that even with my wholesale pricing through my metal vendors at pre 2020 pricing, and I still had gripes about how much budget it took up (we initially built the car very last-minute and it was the first cage opportunity I saw). 

I bought a out of box pre-bent cage kit for a different application and modified it to fit. I got really lucky with that particular kit fitting as well as it did but i would have been able to mod a lesser kit pretty easily.

We have a Fox shell with a complete cage (not very nice, but it is all the material) that was $150 for the entire rolling shell that has good recoup opportunities on it. Deals are out there

Now for the complainers, the BMW is getting the A-pillars, Halo and dash bar removed if anyone wants the front half of a cage for $85  probably about 25ft of 1.75 x 0.090, pre bent A pillars, halo. This tubing is like $22/ft new currently. So who wants a full cage so they can safely go 9's 

In reply to cruisermatt :

There's a local ad for 2.5"x1.5"x 16 ga. tube for $1/foot.......If I hadn't already built my Challenge car chassis I'd be buying a bunch of it to build a GT style chassis and then plunk a cage bought from FB or Craigslist on top of it. I see Autopower bolt-in cages for $200 occasionally. I could cut and weld a bolt-in cage to suit a lot of applications.