Show me your roll cage to suspension tower bracing, ..and other bracing/stiffening you've done Options

[naro914]

with all the work we're doing on Papa Smurf, one of big pieces of the development is tying the roll cage to the rear and front suspension points, plus doing tubing to strengthen other points around the car.

Would like to see how people run the tubes from the roll cage, through the fire wall or window, through the engine compartment area, into the rear trunk to the shock towers. We have things in the way there, but will move around if needed....

Thanks!

[Chi-town]

Apparently not, because he chose the second worse door bar arrangement for any uni-body car. The design of a NASCAR chassis is significantly different than any uni-body design. The NASCAR chassis is designed for the "nascar door bars". Most production cars are in no way designed to accommodate the NASCAR door bars and most are at best a compromise and at worst an overweight tragedy.

If your fabricator is considering using the current mess in the car, find another fabricator.

There are a lot of different designs that people use the term "Nascar doorbars" for.

A prime example would be the guys in the Pro Drift series.

I think most use the term when talking about a double row door bar configuration extending to the outer door skin but not specifically the design used by Nascar.

[GregAmy]

There are a lot of different designs that people use the term "Nascar doorbars" for.

SCCA uses the term "NASCAR bars" not as a design term but as a descriptor for the need for two (minimum) horizontal bars:

NASCAR-Style Door Bars – If installed, shall consist of one or more sidebars that intrude into the door cavity and connect the main hoop to the front hoop.


Fabricators should absolutely consider load paths and attachments when building these, with the goal of stopping a car from intruding into the cockpit and injuring the driver.

I do not build cages (though I do have a BSMechE) so I'll defer to fabricators like Brett, but my general mindset is that the bars should be sufficiently stout not so much to stop a car from coming in, but to assist in moving the caged car out of the way of a collision, based on weight and tires used.

Toward that, SCCA is allowing and encouraging fabricators to attach the seats directly to the cage, not to the car's structure. That way, when the cage moves, the driver moves within that protective structure. That can also give fabricators some flexibility in cage-point-restricted classes (e.g., Touring, B-Spec, Improved Touring) by attaching to cage on both sides of the driver, making a mini-cell-within-the-cell.

We don't have a lot of engineers in the scrutineering pool, so a lot of the design falls on the fabricator; if it has two horizontal bars, it's a "NASCAR Bar" and will get signed off. So, choose your fabricators carefully...