My good friend Don Welch of DW Designwerks and I built a cage in my $50.00 car a few weeks ago. I just couldn't be happier with it. I love the pyramids in the door openings and all of the gusseted corners. Don did all of the TIG welds so they look really nice, I did all of the rough looking MIG welds on the gussets.
He built a cage with the door openings like this in the 24 hours of lemons car that we ran this year and it took a really hard hit to the RF door. The door skin was wrapped around the cage pretty bad and the cage didn't budge a bit.
After I fix the small amount of rust in the hell hole and replace the inner quarter on the L side where some gorilla hacked out the oil tank and filter holes with a sharp rock I'll tie in the rear suspension to the cage and I'll also tie in the front suspension later as time permits. I had to get all of the bent tubes installed and get all of the TIG welds done before Don left for Australia so that's why I didn't get it all done at once. Yesterday I got all of the gussets welded in and I primed it with self etching epoxy primer so that it won't rust sitting out on the coast here.
More pics tomorrow

Nice door bars. You must be young & flexible.

In the last picture is the top tube a seperate welded piece to the uprights? If so I do not believe it will be legal to race with it? I would check the rules for where you plan to run to see what they say about the "main loop" of the cage just to be sure.

I'm 43 and not skinny, it's not too hard to enter and exit but it's not like getting in a big Cadillac.
The last picture is a diagonal brace from the center top of the rear hoop to the floor on the passenger's side. It's clearly visible in pic # 2.
I've been fine with the same thing in my 4 cyl car with the PCA and the POC for years but I've never tried to run with the SCCA or any vintage group.

Ahhh, I see now. The weld look better than most factory weld jobs I have seen!

Don is an outstanding welder. Most of my welding experience, while considerable, was upside down on rusty sheet metal with dirt in my eyes and sparks flying into my ears and underwear. I can weld under adverse conditions but in perfect conditions I'm somewhat lacking relative to the guys who really now what they're doing.

I finished the welding and primered it last weekend.

smore

No harness crossbar?

The cage structure looks very effective. Good design!
A couple of minor points:
IMO, the front and rear "taco" gussets in the door bars are unnecessary. The top and bottom ones would make the assembly strong enough, along with the outwardly bent tubing.
One thing I do to prevent tweaking the chassis is to wait on attaching the cage structure to the mounting plates until all the other welds are completed.

I liked the look of the "tacos" in the door openings, he modeled it after some Porsche factory racecar, so I just went with it.
I didn't do a harness bar because I think that the convoluted double walled top of the firewall is more than strong enough to support any strain that my harness could inflict on it and because if I put a harness bar behind the driver's seat I can't slide the seat far enough back to get my fat ass in and out of the car.

Here is how I ran my seat back brace on my ITB car. I am 6'5" tall.
Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

What thickness are the plates that you welded to the chassis for the tubes? I mean the flat plates that are welded to the "hell hole" area??

Rich

5" long sections of 3 X 3/16. I plan to box in the R suspension consoles with something like 16ga or 18ga and tie the consoles to the firewall also. At this stage I was just trying to get all of the bent pieces done before Don had to take his tubing bender to Australia.

what size tube and wall thickness are you running 1.5 x .120?