Rollbar vs Rollcage for the answer

In reply to dyintorace:

Where did you get those black covers for your sparco's. Mine are this hideous red and yellow.

wearymicrobe wrote: In reply to dyintorace: Where did you get those black covers for your sparco's. Mine are this hideous red and yellow.

Just saw this. I bought them from a buddy and that's how they came. Sorry.

Continuing the threadjack...

I think I have solved my personal bar vs. cage dilemma, at least in the short term.

I found a set of wheels and tires on Craigslist (which subsequently turned into two sets of wheels and tires) and the guy said something to the effect of "Too bad you're not looking for a roll bar"...

While I was hoping to find a Hard Dog Double Diagonal, instead he led me to a four point Autopower bar. He offered it at a fair price, so I bought it anyway, thinking that I would just pass it along to someone else. But after looking at the geometry and ease of installation for a couple of days, I have decided to install it and use it for the first part of the year. It seems much, much stronger than I would have expected. I think that it will offer decent head clearance and allow me to use a wider seat for now. I just need to find about three feet of 1.750 x 0.120 DOM mild steel tubing so that I can weld in a harness bar. Looks like I need to go mail order because the local steel supplier doesn't carry any DOM stuff.

I'd be comfortable using HREW for a harness bar

collinskl1 wrote: I'd be comfortable using HREW for a harness bar

I suppose I could do that. My shoulders will clearly be the first point of failure in the system.

Either way, wear the arm restraints. I saw I video on the Web of a man rolling a caged Miata without them. His left arm damn near came off, and he finished upside-down with (I think) his arm between the cage and the ground.

One of the reasons I'm switching from dual purpose cars to a dedicated track car is so I can stop doing what have now become pretty fast HPDE laps on tree-lined Eastern tracks in cars with stock seats and belts. I could get by with denial for the first three seasons, but I'm P-car fast now, and I had an "interesting" non-contact spin during my last outing on Labor Day weekend. But damn, the whole system with cage or bar, seat, harness, and neck restraint is a big outlay. The price of fun, I guess.

In reply to JBasham:

Exactly the reason I walked away from time trial and hpde.

My challenge car has all the gear to get back in though....

Im a firm believer in all the gear all the time.

JBasham wrote: But damn, the whole system with cage or bar, seat, harness, and neck restraint is a big outlay.

If you think that's expensive, try crashing without them!

FWIW, Bethania Garage (Hard Dog) sells a bolt-in harness bar that attaches to the seat belt towers, if you don't want to grind through the powder coating on that Autopower bar to weld to it.

codrus wrote: FWIW, Bethania Garage (Hard Dog) sells a bolt-in harness bar that attaches to the seat belt towers, if you don't want to grind through the powder coating on that Autopower bar to weld to it.

That Hard Dog bar is $175 shipped.

And it's pretty well established that Autopower just hits their bars with spray paint to keep them from rusting immediately. This one is already looking pretty shabby, so I'll just weld in a new bar, strip the whole thing and then hit it with Rustoleum Hammered Black.

Hey Woody,

Looks like you're trying to sell that bar? If not, you're welcome to swing by and build a harness bar, I've got plenty of 1.75x.090" and a tubing bender you can use if you want.. I'm up in Stafford.

In reply to WonkoTheSane:

I changed my mind about selling it and decided to use it instead.

I appreciate the offer, but I'm about an hour from Stafford and I think I can accomplish what I need to in town at my friends shop. I just need to find I piece of tubing. I might be able to find HREW in Beacon Falls, but I can't get there until Monday.

My plan is to install it in the car as it is, just in case I need to spread the bars to make it fit. Then I will get a measurement for the harness bar, remove it, weld it up and then repainted it.

Sounds like a plan, let me know if something changes. You're south-west of Hartford, right? Have you been to Logan Steel in Meriden? That place is pretty incredible, they may have some 1.75 in the bargin/self-serve area.. And I know they're open on Saturdays.

While you're welding on that Autopower, throw a diagonal in there.

APEowner wrote:

JBasham wrote: But damn, the whole system with cage or bar, seat, harness, and neck restraint is a big outlay.

If you think that's expensive, try crashing without them!

No joke!

Look, I already forgot the window net.

I've been thinking about adding some door bars to the commute attack spyder to help with rigidity but not doing a full cage because mostly street use (80/20). Any thoughts? It already has door cards with fabric pulls.

Keith Tanner wrote: While you're welding on that Autopower, throw a diagonal in there.

Not a bad idea. I just may do that.

I installed the used Autopower bar into my '95-M yesterday. I still need to put the seats and trim back in, but the bar itself is in place so I decided to post some info here. Now that I know how it fits, I'll take some more measurements and figure out where I want the harness bar and diagonal to go, then remove it, strip it down, weld in the new bars, paint it and reinstall it.

The Autopower top cross bar sits in about the same position as the Hard Dog Hard Bar Sport, Hard Bar Sport, M2 Sport, M1/M2 Hard Core Hard Top, and Extreme (i.e. further back and a little lower than the M1/M2 Hard Core non-Hard Top). The Autopower doesn't take up as much space around your shoulders and the seat belts stay in their original position.

I've installed three Hard Dog bars in the past. You don't need to cut the rear shelf like you do with the HD, although you do need to trim the bolt-in panel behind the seats, the plastic trim and the carpet, just as you would for the HD. So the Autopower bar can be removed much more cleanly than the HD. You would just need to pop a few rubber plugs into the holes.

I think that Hard Dog bars are nicer, but the Autopower bar takes up less space and is much easier to install.

Rather than turn this into a complete threadjack, I'll post the full details on the installation in my Build-Thread. Roll bar installation begins on page 7.