Miata Roll Bar Install issues

So I got my Roll bar in yesterday and it ended up taking us about 8 hours. First timers and some issues with sorting out the bolts. I wanted to document what we went through/ran into to see if this is somewhat normal or if this is more pain due to ongoing issues people have with the product I ended up buying.

I got in on the group buy for the Evil Genius Racing roll bar a while back. They had some early fitment issues with clearing the frame rails and that the holes in the seat belt tower mounting position were not large enough for the shouldered bolts.

These were the instructions that came with the bar. And really some of them were garbage. http://www.onestopraceshop.com/index.php/how-to-install-an-egr-roll-bar

Order of operations 1) battery disconnected 2) seats came out 3) carpet came up on the rear deck 4) plastic trim pieces over the seat belt reels had to come off (maybe before the carpet? 5) rear metal cover came off with bolts 6) rear fuel filler cover off in the trunk 7) try to dry fit the bar to see what needs to be cut 8) make the cuts, which ended up being larger than needed Note: getting the bar around the battery cable and other stuff was a pain At this point we noticed we could not get the bar to sit right against the rear firewall/whatever you call it because the mounting plate on the left hand main hoop leg is hitting the bracket/bolt that the seat belt reel is mounted to. We pull out the roll bar and use an angle grinder to take a chunk out of the mounting plate foot making a little notch 9) Bar is dry fit and fitting in place where it should be, we put the soft top up and make sure it clears everything seems fine 10) The directions for the seat belt bolts are completely wrong and don't even have the right spacers or bolts for an NA miata. It tells you to reuse the stock bolt on the inner hole. The inner hole has a nut welded into it while the stock bolt is a 3 inch bolt with only 1 inch of thread

See the nut here

11) At this point we are starving go to hit up Lowes for hardware and they don't have grade 8 7/16-20 bolts, neither does Home Depot. We finally find what we think we need at Ace Hardware and head back. Then we find out the bolts for attaching the roll bar to the seat belt mounting position are too long that we purchased.

12) finally have the right hardware and when we align one side of the roll bar with the seat belt towers the other hole is about 1/2 an inch off or almost a bolt thread width

We take a file to it and are able to make a hole that still fits the spacers and fits solid lining up to let us bolt the roll bar in

13) we drill the forward main hoop mounting plates and that goes fine

14) we drill the passenger side rear mounting holes with some creativity of using an air compressor grinding wheel with a drill bit to make a guide hole

15) we start drilling holes on the drivers side and the alignment is off on the rear leg (the bar is flush at the seat posts and the fire wall so its got to be the bar?)

The "inner" hole on the roll bar to match the backing plate would have been inside the fender as in not accessible from under the car

This is the driver side

This is the passenger side

This is with the front backing plates installed and the seat tower bolts are again in as well so I don't believe there to be any slop

16) We drill some new holes and flip the backing plate on the drivers side and get it bolted in

17) We start putting everything back together and wonder how the HECK are you supposed to get the plastic covers for the seat belt reels back on? They had to come off to get access to the bolts for the rear deck but at the same time there doesn't seem to be a way to get them on once you bolt in the roll bar?

So in the end its installed and the bar looks good in there and clears the soft top fine but is this at all a normal install experience in terms of things not always being perfect?

Is that one of the recent bars that supposedly has the fitment "corrected"? I've got one of those cluttering up the garage but haven't got around to attempting to fit it.

BTW, is your car a 1.6 or a 1.8?

This was a fixed bar. The fixes were that the bars in the back used to not clear the frame rails and required some grinding and that the holes on the outside in the front (the ones that mount to the seat belt position) were not large enough for the shouldered bolt.

Mine is a 1990 1.6 so maybe part of my issues with the bolts were due to that

My understanding is that fitting the bar to a 1.6 is easier as you don't also run into issues with mounting the bar around the ECU.

Maybe I'm just extraordinarily nervous with all the comments about fitment of this bar and the issues that people are having with them, but nothing that I read so far wants me to tear into the car and fit the bar.

I've sent a link to this thread to the guys at EGR. It worked out but I can't help but think this was not as it should be

No experience with the EGR bar, but I've done a Hard Dog Hard Core. Although the fitment issues weren't as bad as what you had there, even the Hard Dog (which is supposed to be one of the better fitting bars) was not a simple "bolt in." I think its a combination of the fact that there is a fairly small margin of error (you aren't exactly going to be able to stretch or twist one of these suckers if they don't line up properly) and the fact that no two 20 year old Miata chassis are going to have exactly the same measurements. They've all been tweaked to a greater or lesser degree by years of open topped fun. Your project looks harder than mine, and the Hard Dog appears to have less fitment issues than your bar, but we still ended up having to strategically twist the chassis a bit with jacks to get everything to line up.

We tried twisting the chassis with jacks and did not seem to be able to get that area to budge. I guess that is the question I do have how likely was this somehow my car not being straight vs the rollbar being off?

Someone local to me who offered to help with the installation suggested that pretty much any bar will need tweaking to fit the chassis of the car, but then again he appears to have the appropriate tools for that.

^ I don't know, I'm willing to bet it's the bar.

My 122k mile '90 needed no such trickery to install the Hard Dog Hard Core Double Diagonal bar this summer. The car was placed at equal height on jackstands at all four corners.

Fortunately we had a lot of tools on hand

Boy, guess I was lucky. Bought a Harddog M2 bar from someone that never installed it. Came with hardware but no instructions. Looked up instructions on the interweb and 2 of us installed it with no real difficulties, lots of trial fits though.

It's pretty hard to get something 100% right outside of a factory setting, there's just too many variables. Over the years, I've had to spread and tighten various stuff to get a fit, particularly headers. Recently, Toyman had to really rassle the header for our LeMons car.

Honestly I don't mind adapting as long as I know the result is safe/works

Took a lot of coaxing to get the Hard Dog rollbar installed in my step-moms '93 years ago. Like taking the passenger seat out and sitting with my back to the dash and pushing the last leg into place with my feet so my dad could drill the holes kind of coaxing.