Hi guys,

I am considering of stripping out the rear of the car (behind the seats) and welding in a half cage. This will be more than a rollbar as I am looking to make the extension to the sides and the front when the car finally turns into a pure track car.

However, my question is. Can a proper halfcage be fitted with the softtop mechanism still on the car? I don't have a hardtop right now. I know that with a stripped out hardtop there will be more room, but I don't know if this extra space is significant (I used to run a HT). Also, does anyone have measuerments of how much taller the roof and the rear glass window portion is for the hardtop? (I am guessing a maximum of 2 inches, but someone correct me on this..)

One last thing. My cage builder recommended extending two tubes to be welded onto the rear shock towers. Is there enough space in the s2000 to do this? Me and him cant tell because my interior is still in place.

Can someone please chime in and give their advice. Any info is deeply appreciated.

Thanks

 

No.

The two tubes should not really be welded to the shock towers. They should come down just inside the shock towers. There is a major beam running there, so you tie the cage into the car structure and still pick up the loads from the shocks pretty efficiently.

I just picked up my car last night from the guy who was welding in exactly what you are describing. It would not fit with the soft top. It would not fit with the OEM three point belts. It would not fit with the OEM roll hoops. It will not fit with the OEM spare tire. Etc. The back of your car will be basically gutted.

We were able to get it to fit with the OEM fuel tank filler lines. We had thought we were going to have to reroute them, but it just barely worked out OK.

 

can you post some pics please?

 

No camera!

Here's a shot of it being assembled.

 

/\ i like, show us the finished product.

 

Mike, what kind of seats are those?

 

Recaro SPG XL. They do fit, but you will need to make custom, non-sliding attachment hardware.

 

Mike, so are you running hardtop then?

 

Yes. We did some customization work so that it can still be put on and taken off like normal. It's not so much that I'm figuring on running without it (although I may, from time to time), but I figured it would be a LOT easier to work on the interior of the car or remove the seats or that sort of thing with the top off.

You have to cut off the hardtop attachment levers and replace them with welded on nuts. Otherwise the levers would have to swing through the bar.

The racecar solution is to get rid of the OEM mounting hardware entirely and just fab up some mounting brackets that you bolt the hardtop to. That would probably be lighter and simpler than what we ended up doing, but I liked the challenge of seeing if I could figure out how to make the OEM system work with the bar.

You might say that I did the preliminary design engineering on the bar and seats and hardtop, while Doug Chase (who built it) did the detailed design work. As an engineer, I felt better about that than just having somebody do the whole thing for me. Gave me some comfort with the design and concept.

 

Do you think the seats would fit in the car with full interior? If not, what part of the interior would not allow the seat to fit properly? and sliders would be impossible to put in even when custom designed?