Competition Engineering FB 8 pt roll bar kit
 

Anyone running this? What are your impressions of the quality? How heavy is it?

I don't see a link

try google.

http://www.competitionengineering.co...?CatCode=10361

I have one. takes a bit of work to get it in. The kit is not a straight weld or bolt in. The main hoop will need to be trimmed and the rest of the kit is generic and will require carefull measuring and fitting.

I made a mock up of the hoop, cross bar and down legs out of emt, and test fitted that before I even touched the kit. Worked out pretty well that way.

Quality is good, heavy, yes, though I did not weigh it. After I welded in the door bars, I decided it was too much of a pita geting in and out, car is a DD, so I bought the hinge kit. Door bars stay at home most of the time. The stock door panels will not fit with the door bars, due to the molded map pockets.

1.75 x .134 is about 2.3lb per foot.

I measured an autopower 6pt road race cage this weekend. it has approx 50' of tubing. That cage looks to be 35-40ft max. Hope this helps

Tube size and weight chart

Here is a weight and size chart for the Round Steel Tubing. Should answer any weight questions. 2.313 pounds per linear ft. That is quite heavy and inherent with using a kit. Tubing is oversized for liability reasons and some kits use ERW tubing, not DOM so it needs to be thicker to pass the sonic test because the thickness of the tubing walls are inconsistant.

Thanks. That is a lot more weight than I want to add (min weight in class with me is 1800 lbs). I am building EM auto-x car, and don't even need a cage/bar, but would like to add something to be safe. Any ideas on good, lightweight, roll bars?

wrx....... you're not THAT far away.. shoot me an email or pm

Since you are building this car for autocross, why not put in a cage that will be SCCA legal for SCCA Time Trials so that you can run on a real race track some day? The 8 point cage shown is not SCCA legal.

Well, this is gonna have a small block ford V8 in it, so I am not sure what SCCA classes I could run, I think it would be more of a open track day car. I woul dlike a cage, jsut need to keep the weight to a minimum.

Scott, that may be alittle of a drive. I am jsut shopping around right now, but will keep you in mind.

Even with a V8 init, it is always a good idea to make your cage legal in as many sanctioning bodies as possible. A car with the level of modification that you are talking about is going to appeal to a TINY slice of the motoring public - all competition cars have this problem, not a slam on yours. In the event that you want to sell it or even give it away, it always pays to try and make sure that sliver of the population is as large as possible!

The roll bar portion looks to be basically legal for most applications, with the exception of the diagonal legs that are in plane with the hoop that are intended to attach inside toward the transmission tunnel. Too many points of attachment, used for chassis stiffness instead of safety, blah, blah, blah. If it retains it's V8 powerplant it will most likely only be legal for regional classes like SCCA's SPO, where you can attach the cage in five dozen places if you want to! If, at some point down the road, you decide to restore a more traditional engine it may pay dividends to think the cage out clearly. One of the more expensive parts of starting a racecar is the cost of the cage, and that can be a great selling point if you ever want to get out of it.

(EDIT! - I just went back and looked at the picture again and realized that it is missing a required main hoop diagonal, You should definitely look at a cage that is legal in more places!)

That missing main diagonal hoop is the reason I said it was not SCCA legal.

SCCA Time Trials (their version of track days) allows cars with V-8s swapped into them.

Gotcha. I am looking at the autopower cage. It looks pretty good. Not sure though. I have time to decide, as the project still has a lot of work to be done.

An Autopower would be ok for Auto-X, HPDE etc.. The car would be classed in SU for NASA. Probably SPU(?) for SCCA. I don't think the AP cage would offer enough structural rigidity need with a V8 swap. Maybe plan on modifying the cage if thats the route you go.

well, from what I can tell, the first gen handles the v8 swap pretty well, and a welded in autopower would probably help even more. i will keep an eye on it when the time comes. Still not sure if that is the way I will go. I hate to add the extra weight, especially in my class, but safety is more important.

The weight is relative. Adding 20lbs. as compared to the car twisting like a pretzle on accel and cornering. Think about how much weight you are adding to the front (engine swap). There will be some serious chassis flex with this set up. Adding a few extra bars and gusseting isn't going to make you slower, not adding them probably will. It is also more difficult to tune a flexing chassis as compared to a rigid one. Just my two cents.

Good luck

Thanks. I see what you are saying.

legal cage
 

Who makes a cage for FB's that would be legal in SCCA, NSA, NHRA etc.?

That would be SPO for SCCA. Super Production Over 4.0 liters

You are asking a difficult question. SCCA/NASA require different door bars than NHRA. You can use heavy and larger tubing in either RR Org. but you can not use smaller tube in NHRA. The door bar issue will be the tough one to pass unless to run both types in your cage. I get asked that question alot by some of my customers because they want to do both. I haven't found the answer yet. Maybe somebody else can answer it.

Like Russ, I usually tell my customers to pick the one they're most likely going to run and build to suit. If you build the cage to meet NHRA specs and most road race org. specs, you'll end up with a heavy NHRA cage (required diagonal and extra door bars), and a VERY heavy SCCA style cage (NHRA required tube size/weight) and one that pops you into the catch all classes for cage mounting points.

I've gotten many a headache trying to come up with an answer. I guess the real answer is to build two cars ;)