Have any of you guys bought a weld-in cage that is pre-bent? I typically get the cage fabricated but I was wondering if any of mail order cages are any good. This will be a dual purpose car (street/track days).
Thanks,
Chad

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=113365

Just got one from McMark for the same purpose.

why do you want to add LBS to a track car

Chad, Stable Energies sell Safety Device Bars & Cages and they are Rated. Tell Joe, that I said hello.

Also some on here & Pelican will tell you it is a Bad Idea to have Bars in a street car. But, I made sure that my last one was well padded, I had 5 Point belts & proper seat holding me in place and I know I felt safer with it being there

T.C.

Thanks guys.
I know getting in and out with the a cage is a PITA but I can deal with it. I think every 914 I've ever saw TC in had a cage.

....And you want to be like TC???

I say no cages in street cars. Roll bar, cool. Full cage? Not cool. Too many tubes that you can hit with important parts of your anatomy. Like your head.

Unless you want to wear a helmet and five-point restraints on the street, I say no cage.

--DD

Have you ever been in a 914? There's plenty of stuff just 3 inches away from your head anyways.

With proper padding installed, a rollcage is no worse that hitting your head on the factory stock pillar that is right next to your head already.

I'm certainly not doubting DD's expertise, though. I have not put a cage in a car yet, but I've always wondered what the stigma is as well. On older cars without air bags, there are plenty of non-padded surfaces to get hurt on anyway. With good padding on a roll bar, whats the difference?

I will, however run full 5- point harnesses in any car built before the addition of airbags and modern safety measures from now on (and especially with a roll cage). My gf has a friend who was rear-ended in a modern car and head slammed into the steering wheel. Not pretty.

You need to get the stylish yet sexy "airbag collar."



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Oud3iGXWY

It's complicated - http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911...legal-ny-2.html

Interesting thread. Thanks Mark.

I sell 914 roll cages that I make.
I've built many roll cages in various road racing cars since 1991.
I've crashed street cars and I've crashed race cars.

I don't recommend installing a roll cage in a street car unless it's primarily driven to and from A/X or track events, not a daily driver.
Any roll cage tube is closer than the car's interior upholstery, and has a shape conducive to bone breaking.
Without a helmet, driving any car with a full cage is more dangerous than a car with no cage.
Without proper restraints, the likelihood of severe injury resulting from a crash is increased by the presence of structural steel tubing.

Sometimes feeling safer leads one to take greater risks.

I don't think a 5 point harness is legal in a street car. It's just what I read, I could be wrong.

I'll weigh in my opinions...

I think that there are enough people driving around in 914s with cages that don't have any problems with brain damage or injury to say that having a cage in a street car isn't inherently dangerous. But I also think that a cage in a street car is overkill. Plenty of people love that racecar-on-the-street look, but IMHO a cage in a street car offers very little cost-benefit as far as performance.

And I also have the impression that a harness isn't technically street legal. But you'll have to be an asshole to a cop to get that ticket, most likely.

And to add fuel to the fire, i just checked my head to something solid clearance on my Jetta on the way home from work.

My head is only about 3" away from the B-pillar, which is solid metal with a thin layer of hard plastic covering it.

On my 914, the top of the roll-cage is actually further away (almost 5") and it is covered in shock absorbing roll-cage padding material.

According to some of the posts above, my 914 is a death-trap while my Jetta is a perfectly acceptable daily driver.

I don't get it ...

IF you run a roll cage in a street car it is imperative that it be padded properly. My car is a dual purpose (albeit 98% street/2% track) toy but I installed the cage not necessary for my safety rather to stiffen the loosey goosey uni-body. Had I known how much difference it would have made it would have been JOB #1 on the list - amazingly tight!

BTW - All the bars NOW have proper padding on them (in the pic below).

Click to view attachment

The street 914 was designed to crumple on impact, absorbing the energy instead of transferring the energy to the occupants. I for one would be more concerned with neck and concussion issues in a caged car.

Personally I am quite comfortable with my angst and nihilism. Besides a cage would interfere with my James Dean self image.

To be properly effective, 5-point belts need to be tight enough that you can't look over your shoulder when backing up. I don't want to wear belts that tight on the street. They're also not DOT-approved, so technically they are not street-legal. Though I've talked to a couple of cops that said they would only ticket me for it if they really really needed some excuse to give me one.

The Jetta, assuming it's from the last decade or two, was designed with a set of safety systems. Designed together, engineered together, tested together.

A 914 with a roll cage was not.

Not all 914s are the same. I know that in my car, the top bars of the cage would come within about 2" of my head. Maybe less. Door bars would be even closer. No way is that safe in an accident using the stock belts and the stock seats.

--DD

But to argue your Belt theory, think about that a Stock set of belts are now 40 Years Old.

I think in SCCA, you can't have Belts that are over 5 years old

Holy leg breaker Batman. Lets hope you never have to find out what I mean by that. If that were my street or race car, I would cut out the petty bar and that torture device over your legs.

your body will take the impact with a stiff car .....let the car fold up and you will not get as hurt .theres some pretty smart folks that have already figured that out.. THERE IS NO DEBATE...5 points are not D.O.T approved...silly but true

How can you compare your thick head with that of a normal person?

Last time i checked, the Jetta metal is just as hard as the 914 metal.

How in the world is it safer to have a factory metal beam 3" from my head than a aftermarket metal beam 5" from my head?

Please enlighten me ...


PS: As for the seat belts, on the street, i use early belts that are non-retractable. They are much more snug than later style belts.

I did? I apologize, my mistake ...

A roll cage is to protect you when the car rolls over. It's not designed to absorb impact. That's another reason I got rid of the Yellow Zonker. (That and a half dozen speeding tickets).

crumple zones....the car takes the impact ....by the time your head hits it its lost alot of energy....JMO

I still have crumble zones. My cage is only inside the passenger compartment. It's not tied to either the front or rear shock towers.

The 914 crumble zone is *not* inside the cabin, it's the trunks. I did not modify the trunks.

I have pictures of stock 914s (no cage etc.) that were in head-on collisions. The passenger compartment is still largely intact.
I don't buy the "crumble zone" argument for cages that aren't tied to the suspension points.

OK....that seems logical ....but you have still stiffened the chassis .. lots of longs get tweeked when the cars are wrecked

I thought Ammoy was your crumple zone?

All 98 pounds of her?

Thanks for the feedback. All of my cars that I have put cages in previously were dedicated racecars only. I am interested in putting a cage in because I don't like the idea of putting a car on the track without one. I want to be able to take the car I'm building to the track because there isn't a winding road in all of Houston.

Just pretend that Traffic are apexes

not trying to be negative
but just warning you

I have a freind who broke both knees' in a light accident with a knee bar like yours
those are pretty low and it would be a lot safer to cut that out or put it behind the dash... be careful.

I was doing a skid pad and got off line a bit and hit a bump. Bonked my head on the halo part (side) of the cage.....it was padded and I had my helmet on (5 point harness also). Damn near knocked me out. That caged hoop was eliminated the next winter.....also got rid of that knee bar to one up over the steering column.

That knee bar in the previous pic (Not yours JP) scares me too.

My front cross bar goes behind the dash and is not visible (or hittable) at all ...

A friend of mine lost his right eye-brow in a roll over. That was in a street car with no cage. He was wearing seat belts. We found his eyebrow stuck to the *passenger* side top of the door frame.

My point being, the side part of a roll cage is no worse that the top of a roof or door in a normal passenger car. Hitting your head on metal hurts.

It's not like your head will think "Oh, the factory put that steel beam here, this won't hurt a bit!"

You cannot have AFTERMARKET belts (harnesses) that are over 5 years old. You can have FACTORY belts that are as old as the car. (Or older.) Done primarily for liability; the assumption is that the OEMs did enough research to ensure that the stock belts are good enough for a reasonable impact.




Maybe your case is different; at least JP and I would have a beam much closer than 3" from our heads in our cars.

The point, however, is that the Jetta was designed so that people would have reasonable odds of surviving a collision, even when their heads are 3" from that beam. Perhaps the beam is designed to crumple out of the way, or perhaps the belts are designed to keep you from going that direction, or perhaps something else is supposed to keep you from hitting that beam. The seatbelts and cockpit structures are (in theory at least!) designed as a complete system. Making ad-hoc changes to that system can result in Very Bad Things happening.

If you want to keep arguing that your 914 is safer for you than your Jetta is, you can keep talking. But it doesn't change the fact that full roll cages in street-driven cars are generally a Very Bad Idea. In the general case, for most people and most cars.




Hurts, yup. But hitting your head on a large flat piece of metal is not as likely to shatter your skull as hitting it on a 2" diameter tube. It wouldn't be fun, but you're less likely to become a corpse due to it.

--DD

Thank you all for your concern...I will address the cowl hoop as I find it necessary moving forward.

Regarding the yellow car above...my goodness, how does that pass tech? I wouldn't get into a car that I stick OUT of. Below is my seated/belted position (I'm 6'5") and have more than 5 inches of clearance. This took quite a bit of custom work but I just look over the top of the steering wheel. The important thing is I'm seated low and my head is clear of bars...all the exposed bars in the pics have SINCE been fully padded - before someone flames me.

Click to view attachment

6'5" guy ^^^ , i assume your seat is bolted to the floor? no stock tilt/slide?

Aaron,

the car has a nice pan and the seat is lowered into the pan recess...
lower than a stock floor.

a lot of nice fab work and effort went into lowering that seat.

beware your knee's though...
I'm not trying to be negative, but I've seen it with my own eyes..

Padding is the bare minimum on all area's of a roll cage
it doesn't really make it as safe as say "no body contact"

I'm arguing that comparing a 40+ year old car to a modern car when it comes to safety is a very moot point.

My Jetta better be generally safer than the 914. There's over 30 years of car development between them.

My point is that the cage in my car is nowhere near as close to my head than what you are trying to tell people.
I'm not sure who designed your cage, but if you have exposed metal bars closer than 3" from your head, you need to find a better cage builder.

Yepp, they aren't called "kneecapper" for no reason ...

Here's a pic of my cage while it was build (ignore the temp braces). The front cross bar goes under the steering column but is high enough to completely sit behind the dash.
The lower dash pad actually wraps around the bottom of the bar covering it fully.

Cracker, it may be a trick of the light, but those roll bar corners look like they're kinked. Kinked is bad.

If you see something like this, it needs to be redone.

Questions (not sure if on or off-topic): Would it be possible to do a 914/6 GT style bolt-in top to give some extra support, along with the beefed up a-pillar, to help with safety on a dual purpose car?

Also, is there a way to help with side-impact protection on a dual purpose or street driven car w/o a cage?

Mark - It IS a trick of the light...I have no "kinks" in the cage. Coincidentally, I have one of the best race fabricator's in the South. Thanks for looking out for me...I'm sure that does occur in home built cars quite often.

On the note above about quality. I see so many cages that are only mounted to the top of the rocker (box), or the plate just rolls over the edge. The 914 rockers are CRAZY thin metal and need as much contact area as possible. We used 1/4" plate that runs from the seam all the way to the floor pan. Be sure to "hang" when welding here as the heat can cause major "sag" in the rocker and close your door gaps in a heartbeat! We also tied into the upper seat belt mounts in the sails - this is typical but also important in allowing the entire assembly to "box/triangulate". JFYI.

Brant is correct. When you go down "this" road it IS a one way street. Things can be reverted but that too would be quite a bit of work. We did notch the floor and built a custom floor pan (skid plate technically) and set the seat height to MY liking. Litrally, an average sized man doesn't see 3/4 up the steering wheel - quite funny to see. NO adjustability at all...it's right where I want it and NO ONE drives my car but me. at 4.15 pounds per HP it is a death trap if not accustomed to it.

Thanks for the advice regarding the "knee knockers"...I'll look into a better solution. I'm just slightly hard headed.

I'm definitely taking this off topic

wow... what motor and weight are you
500hp and 2000lbs?

A little more weight...and a little more power.

With the top on the car (the yellow one) that cage is SCCA legal.