Roll Cage, phase 0: It arrives

Okay!  I’m excited.  The roll cage kit has arrived from Advanced Autosports.  It’s a complete weld in kit including NASCAR style door bars.  It comes with all the bent parts (main hoop, sides, harness bar, windshield bar, and door bars) as well as precut straight pieces, and steel plates to act as footings.  I like the AA cage for several reasons:

1. It maximizes the allowed steel for footings.
2. The footings are also extended into the rocker-panel, and the cage tubing can actually be welded to the side and footing for a VERY strong landing
3. The harness bar is directly inline with the door bars.  This helps to transfer the load from a door impact across the cage rather than into the driver.
4. The cage comes with a knee bar that runs through the dash.  This is at the height of the bumper, so that if someone hits the door, again the load is transferred away from the driver.
5. The cage is made of 1 5/8” DOM 0.095 wall mild steel.  Slightly larger than required, and a little stronger as a result.

Below shows the main-hoop on the left, and the cage sides on the right.  The harness bar is taped to the top of the main-hoop.

The picture on the left shows all the flat steel that makes up all the footings.  The picture on the left shows the NASCAR style bars, and all the straight pieces.

The first thing that needs to be done is to remove the corner braces between the rocker panel and rear firewall.  It takes a bit of work (and care) to cut these out with an angle grinder.  I cut out the bulk of the steel first, and then ground the remainder down until it was completely gone.

Once I had it all ground flush, I placed the footing pieces in-place an marked the locations of the edges.  That way when it comes time to weld things into the car, I can clean the surface along the marks, and weld away.  Then I just repeated the procedure on the passenger side.

It was kind of a short day.  But, its exciting to finally get the cage and get started on the install.

It was also a very nice day…one of the odd 60 deg days we sometimes get in January.  So, I took the opportunity to put some primer on the package tray covers.