I had a guy drive right into the side of me last year and luckily the nascar bars did their job.... all it did was formed my drivers door to the bars and stopped there... if i had an X i would imagine it would have pushed my door all the way to the X which is only a couple of inches from my hip....

Hopefully you will never have contact!!!

 

Awesome! It's cool to see the evolution of your street car into a full fledged wheel to wheel race car.

 

"imo" is right since its not true at all.

an X is both better in rigitdy and in terms on intrusion protection. You get a crumple zone w/ an X (the door bars then ~5 inches, then the x).

 

You are mistaken if you think the door bar with isn't attached to anything offers any sort of protection or crumble zone. Any collision other than a glancing blow with go throught that bar like it wasn't there and make solid contact with the X bar which will most likely crack or break at the X weld. From there, its only an ince or so away from the driver.

While it may offer more rigidity, the first job of a cage is to protect the driver, rigidity is a bonus.

Here is what can happen without a Nascar bar setup. Luckily it was not on the passenger side.


IMO


Otherwise, nice looking cage.

 

Actually you're mistaken. The welds would not break if they're not some shade farmer weld. Not to mention if you have those sorts of forces the x will be stronger. You might want to talk to someone who understands cage design (like tony) before you assume.

Our door bars are good designed for 45mph iirc.

 

Btw: It's not the FIA, but the following makes the point pretty good.

Think about it, what's stronger? a pair of trianagles or a D shaped bar?

 

the roll cage looks very similar to the WRC ones (in terms of shape)..which seems to do a pretty good job unless they have a very high speed roll or hit a tree very hard.. though I always wondered why they didn't have some kind of carbon hoop built into the car with a sacraficial crush pieces built into it to absorb some of the initial impact to avoid the cage buckling... in the same way the F1 nose cones are designed to crush.

do any of you with the stripped out cars play with the seat position for altering weight distribution?

when I look at the WRC cars in the paddock.. they usually have moved the drivers seat quite a bit from where it originally is in the road car.. I realise they are different cars to the S (usually 4 seaters), just wondering how much detail you go into.

 

not really because most of us have our seats most of the way back and we don't have a back seat (obviously ) to move into.

You are right, the absolute safest would be an X in the door and carbon honey comb in the doors.

 

The weld is one of the weakest points in a cage ,I don

 

My .02: Cages aren't Bridges and the former rarely see an impact that distributes force equally. Bridges, arches, and even eggs are strongest only when the force they're supporting is equally distributed (compression). And I think it'd be extremely rare to have an impact smack the side of a Nascar bar in such a way. In a side impact I can't see how Nascar bars would be much stronger than just horizontal bars--they may be farther away, but if they're weaker that's not much of an advantage.

But whether its an X-bar or a Nascar bar, both offer way more protection than stock, so I'm happy.

Aside from a plasma cutter, what's the best way to gut the doors?