Well, My first attempt was to heat up the steel rods with my butane torch to get the rod red hot. then i hammered about 1/2 inch of the rod fairly flat. then i attempted to bend it into an L shape. The plan was to drill a hole through the flat part and attach it that way. Well, as i found out this is a very strange kind of steel (some kind of spring steel i think, similar to basketball hoops). I could hammer it flat with an anvil and some effort but everytime i tried to bend it, it would snap off whether it was hot or cold. I think that if i got a decent grade aluminum, I would be successful with this method. What i ended up doing is bending my rod witha small cheap pipe bender to the n shape i wanted, making sure the body woudl still fit on overtop then i used some copper wire ends for about a 6 - 10 gage wire. They were like 59cents each and the rod was about 1.89 for a 3 foot length. I heated the copper end up wiht my butane torch and melted some normal rosin core solder into it. then i inserted the end of my rod into the copper fitting and held it in place until the solder cooled enough. It seemed solid enough at this point but just to be sure i used my mig welder to run a very thin weld right at the joint of the copper and the rod. Then i bolted the "n" shaped piece to the chassis after drilling a smallhole on one side and using one of the exhaust pipe clip holes on the other side. then i bolted on my front and rear straight pieces and just held them in place while i mig welded them. Like i mentioned this kind of steel does not seem to weld all that great. i tried two or three different kinds of flux coated mig wire but it still isnt that nice looking but at least it is strong. I now cannot flex the chassis over my knee at all(well maybe a tiny fraction of an inch). All in all it cost me about 5 - 6 $ CDN for parts. and took me maybe 30 - 45 mins by the time i figured out what i needed and added that front piece. I didn't weight it but it isnt that heavy. i still think i will get some aluminum and make a nice version after all every gram counts. As this was my first "rough" attempt I wasnt going to post any close ups of my sloppy work. All the stores are closed for the holidays(i live in a small town) so i couldnt even get washers as i had none to fit and the cable ends had too big of holes. I ended up improvising with pennies, a drill, and a grinder[>:]. Since you asked though i will post some close ups. I was going to get the new era roll cage but they wanted over 65 USD to ship to canada and i know thereal cost is only about 6 USD. Remember azzman i still have dibs on your top plate.
There are a lot of things you can do to your RC vehicles for cheap. Just takes a bit of imagination lol. eg: check out my profile gallery for some pics of my LED setup. Just runs off a 9V battery velcroed to the bottom of my stock body.

Sorry about the poor pic quality, new camera and i can't seem to figure out how to get it to focus close up[&:]