roll cage build

[suzukigav]

The base plates will tear out long before the cage has a chance to do anything.

Steve.

a chance to do anything like what?

[MART]

Hey mate , I would check with the RTA as front cages are now Illegal in NSW for on road use , this came from my engineer as there has been a lot of serious injuries with impact on front cage sections in accidents , I would check with them and also your engineer to find out the right ruling , I too have a front cage and was engineered 3 months before rule change , just check it out and do it right first time , also you should be using cold drawn seamless or similiar for your cage as normal steel has a tendancy to snap , fracture under impact , and you shouldn't be welding in your truck with all that shit in there , one wrong spark and bye , bye zook. Just be aware of head clearances and you must build the front uprights out of one piece of tube , no Joins. It must not impare your vision so probably through the dash is best.

I think your plates will be alright as long as the plate underneath is equal or larger size and you use grade 8 hi-tensile bolts , Cheers Paul.

[suzukigav]

The pipe is cold drawn seemless, The plates underneeth are thicker and have a larger surface area than te ones on top and the bolts are grade 8.8 high tensil. My engineer said that the front cage could be engineered easily if it was all padded. Thanks for the info tho

[GRPABT1]

Ahhh the good old US of A where bigger is always better

[Gwagensteve]

The base plates will tear out long before the cage has a chance to do anything.

Steve.

a chance to do anything like what?

The mounts really need a massive beef up to not tear out. Motorsport cages use multiple mounting planes and much lighter material to achieve massive strength. Your mounts are enough to hold the weight of the cage in place but if heavily side loaded they'll give and you'll have 30kg of metal flinging around.

Always try and mount in more than one plane.

Like this (incomplete in this picture) =





These are from my rough exo and it isn't intended as a roll cage, only to keep the cab straight in flops. note though, I've tried to tie to tube into the cab as much as possilble so the cage adds strength to the cab rather than being separate from it.

Here's a cage I built ages ago. This was tied into the chassis. It's 1.75" CDS "racetech 350" material, which has an excellent "memory" - it will spring quite a long way before it deforms. 1.75" is probably too big to do the front 1/2 in - it won't fit between the dash and the door. The strength at the connections is increased with gussets rather than relying on the weld.



Just some ideas.

Steve.

[Dee]

that cage in the soft top grows on me everytime i look at it steve. nice. any photos of the mounting points? does the B pillar mount to the "angle" in the floor where it drops down into the wells behind the seats?

couple of q's while we are on the subject;

anyone know what the go is with a full B pillar 'hoop' vs. the full length runners from a pillar mounting points right through to the the rear stays, & then running uprights/cross spreader to form the b pillar? (like the olive soft top above)
i've looked at the ccda specs/drawings & they show a full b pillar hoop, & specify rear stays must have no bends... does this mean this style of B pillar construction cant be used? It has to be a full hoop?

Also they specify mounting points to be plates sandwiching the floor, does this also make the "vertical plane" thing un-acheivable? seems to me that its almost sacrificing mounting point strenght by keeping with the rules... in this case maybe tieing to the chassis would be the best of both worlds?

1 more, steve, i noticed the "brace" in the b pillar has bends in it, is this a harness bar? does anyone know if bends in this bar are allowed in cage specs? (say.. ccda?)

[Gwagensteve]

I'll reply in more detail later but this cage wan't made to comply with any comp specs.

Steve.

[lay80n]

i have the exact same bender and have problems with the pipe just simply folding in. would like 42mm OD 6mm be better?

Pack your tube tight with wet sand and seal the ends, this will stop it kinking in the dye as you bend.

Layto....

[Guy]

i have the exact same bender and have problems with the pipe just simply folding in. would like 42mm OD 6mm be better?

Pack your tube tight with wet sand and seal the ends, this will stop it kinking in the dye as you bend.

Layto....

wet sand .. I was alwyas told dry sand (easier to compact) .. you also need to seal up both ends of the pipe.

[brendan_h]

if you have the money you can buy a good quality die. there usualy about 100bucks each

i recently made a tube bar but if i had know i can get a better die i would have goten that instede of spending money on more pipe (heavyer walled) o at least i got pipe leaft to make my rock siders

[Dee]

Bump re olive ST cage:

any photos of the mounting points?

[Gwagensteve]

I've just gone through 4500 photos and no, I don't have any better photos of the mounting points.

They were 100X100 plates sandwiched though the floor and tied back to the chassis.

On the rear 4 points the plates were tied straight down on to the top of the chassis.

On the front 2 points, the plates were very close to the factory body mounts so the outrigger for the roll cage was tied to the body mount and welded to the side of the chassis- the body didn't really have to do anything.

It wasn't a competition cage, so the seats weren't tied to the cage as is best practice. The cross brace behind the seats was bent because is was a failed front brace that we didn't get the angles right on. There was another bit the same and we braced that diagonally to the drivers b pillar bar - again, not good practice but plenty for a recreational cage in Vic - we're not hitting 30 foot waterfalls or anything.

With another brace across the rearmost downtubes to mount the shocks on, there was about 21 metres of tube in this cage.

The tubes were run front to rear for two reasons. One, to make the car slide when it was jammed up rather than hook on the vertical bars.

Also, sierras are very tight in the cabin and Greg wanted the stock roof to still fit, so by running the bars front to rear the bars could be pulled up as close to the top corners of the cabin as possible, allowing for more room in the cab- Again, Greg's about 6 foot.

Sierras are massively hard to get a 6 point cage into and still have a safe, roomy cabin- as an example, the windscreen catches on this car ended up on the cage and hooked the frame above the windscreen because there was no room for the catches beside the dash with the cage there.

Steve.

Ironic - never rolled on....

[lay80n]

I've just gone through 4500 photos and no, I don't have any better photos of the mounting points.

They were 100X100 plates sandwiched though the floor and tied back to the chassis.

On the rear 4 points the plates were tied straight down on to the top of the chassis.

On the front 2 points, the plates were very close to the factory body mounts so the outrigger for the roll cage was tied to the body mount and welded to the side of the chassis- the body didn't really have to do anything.

It wasn't a competition cage, so the seats weren't tied to the cage as is best practice. The cross brace behind the seats was bent because is was a failed front brace that we didn't get the angles right on. There was another bit the same and we braced that diagonally to the drivers b pillar bar - again, not good practice but plenty for a recreational cage in Vic - we're not hitting 30 foot waterfalls or anything.

With another brace across the rearmost downtubes to mount the shocks on, there was about 21 metres of tube in this cage.

The tubes were run front to rear for two reasons. One, to make the car slide when it was jammed up rather than hook on the vertical bars.

Also, sierras are very tight in the cabin and Greg wanted the stock roof to still fit, so by running the bars front to rear the bars could be pulled up as close to the top corners of the cabin as possible, allowing for more room in the cab- Again, Greg's about 6 foot.

Sierras are massively hard to get a 6 point cage into and still have a safe, roomy cabin- as an example, the windscreen catches on this car ended up on the cage and hooked the frame above the windscreen because there was no room for the catches beside the dash with the cage there.

Steve.

Ironic - never rolled on....

A small side note, recently in discussion with an engineer regarding a roll cage, i asked about tie-ing the seats in to the cage floor bars. The engineer said no he would not pass this If you build the cage properly, and tie the seats to it by mounting them to floor bars off the cage, it should be safer. It would depend on which engineer you choose to use.

Layto....

[Dee]

I wanna put some bracing/triangulation in the roof section but am a bit confused about how I go about it.
I was going to put a brace going straight from centre of B to centre of A. Like this. (plan view, top = a pillar)
___
| | |
\..../

But I can’t the middle of the B pillar is tucked up behind the targa bar & I don’t want to lower it any futher, as the two upper cage bendscurrently line up with the insides of the corners of the targa bars so I can run the bars to the a pillar tight for max headspace.

So I was going to do it like this instead;
____
| / \ |
\...../

but I can’t seem to find any pics of other cages done this way, I’m concerned its due to headspace where the angled pieces meet the B pillar corners, most I find run this way… from centre of B out to corners of A. Which again, I cant do due to the centre of my B being behind targa bar…
____
| \ / |
\...../

Has anyone seen them done like the second picture, or see a real problem doing it that way? I was thinking of maybe putting a slight bend to each end of the angled pieces to get them up to the height of the B pillar, but just thought I’d check here for any info from others.

[just cruizin']

Mine is from Passenger A pillar to Driver's B pillar, only one right across thus forming two triangles on the roof

------
|\ |
| \ |
| \|
------
\ /
\ /

Although with mine the B pillar sits back about 200mm further then normal which gives more head room

[Dee]

Although with mine the B pillar sits back about 200mm further then normal which gives more head room

Mines up close behind the targa, but either way it still puts a 1.5" piece of tube underneath the height of the targa if its up hard to it) above ya head.
To me its seems to close... especially when you factor in helmet/padding/stock seatbelt movement.

guess i may have to look at harnesses.

[Zook_Fan]

did you ever happen to finish this?

[VR Rodeo]

So does anyone have any pictures of how they have done the front half of a 6 point cage ? There is a couple threads were people have a mate, whos mates, sister has but no pics I am looking at doing something based on the CCDA designs but am worried about head clearance as apparently I need a couple inches clearance above my helmet.

[saffrett]

to get more head room make the b pillar higher then the targer and run the bracers back over it this gives heaps more room and then you can add wings above the doors which helps when leaning on stuff. there should be enough slack in the softtop to go back over it to

[google]

what are the names of those good bender dies and where do you get them from as i would like to buy a couple

[google]

here is a pic of my cage with the cross braces on the roof and dont forget soft tops need a tin roofs in comps

[VR Rodeo]

to get more head room make the b pillar higher then the targer and run the bracers back over it this gives heaps more room and then you can add wings above the doors which helps when leaning on stuff. there should be enough slack in the softtop to go back over it to

Yer had seen that on Markil's one, I like the idea but I was hoping to keep it all internal.

here is a pic of my cage with the cross braces on the roof and dont forget soft tops need a tin roofs in comps

Cheers for that, have you ever hit your head on the cross bars ? CCDA specs require anything close to the head to be padded which also reduces room. Do you know whether a FRP roof will be suffice ?

[google]

that is inside the cab and i have got 150mm from the top of my head to the roll cage and the smallest space from the top of the roll cage to the top of the head is 100mm clearence to the padding in queensland but check with the engineers who are going to comply it for it to be street legal

[v840]

what are the names of those good bender dies and where do you get them from as i would like to buy a couple

What type of bender do you have?