A yes cage engineering! I think some of you home engineers need to go back to school. A tube is strongest in tension. It takes a considerable more amount of force to bend an x bar configuration than a NASCAR style set up. How does NASCAR get away with it??? Because they have five horizontal door bars and four vertical door bars. They get away with it in mass. If you look at current FIA GT, WRC, and Touring cars they all have an "x" style. FIA is currently investigating cage design given the amount of large WRC crashes in the past few years. They will be a lot of really good data coming out of that. You will also see a lot more crush boxes on the market in the next year or two. These mount in-between the door and the cage and slow the impact down, reducing the peak g-forces.

That's all for now folks! Glad to hear Dennis and Raymond are happy!

-Tony

 

Can you please post data supposting this?

And how much force is requred before contact with the driver would have to happen?

 

Sure, there are a few hundred variables that need to be set first. I don't do internet debates, too busy, have fun guys.

-tony

 

So you come into the forum, insult people here and make a blakent statment. Then when asked to back up your statement you leave. Why did you post in the first place?

 

I think here's the data:

"If you look at current FIA GT, WRC, and Touring cars they all have an "x" style."

Even Tamiya has the right idea:

 

[QUOTE=IfixVWs,May 22 2006, 09:00 AM] So you come into the forum, insult people here and make a blakent statment.

 

I missed this b4. Sawzall works great too.

 

Great looking cage, would you mind sharing what the costs were on the cage?

Looks great and thanks for sharing.

 

Agreed. Unless any of us here is a structural engineer, we are just stating an option. Even the majority of cage builders out there are just fabricators, not engineers. IMO.

 

Haven't been on the board in a long time, but I needed to PM someone, so I thought I'd check the board real quick and take a quick break from work...

I sat in an S2000 with x-braced sides a while back (can't remember which car) and remember the first thing I did was bang my elbow on the x while finding a good position to sit in. Without getting into whether an X or nascar bars are safer in a large touring car with lots of space next to the driver's seat, in the S2000 space is at such a premium that an x-brace side is way too close for my comfort. Even if you get just a little give in a collision, you'll have intrusion into the seat area. And even if there is no give at all, it would seem like you could shatter your arm/elbow on the bar in even a relatively minor collision.

Also, while it is true that the tubes are extremely strong in tensile strength, the same cannot really be said of the welds that tack the x to the rest of the cage. And if those welds hold, it's still possible to pull other parts of the cage inward from a collision at the x. I'm not trying to say a nascar bar is stronger, but I think the argument on this discussion has been far over-simplified. There are many pros and cons to each, which is why you can find plenty or race cars that use an x and plenty that use nascar bars.