I put a 6 pt roll bar in my car mainly for looks but Im sure it helps strengthen the chassis as well. The problem is that now I cant recline my seats due to the cross bar being right behind the head rest. Would it be wise to weld in this clevis kit which will allow me to remove the bar when I want to go out for a cruise with the kids or something? I wont use those pins to secure it. iwill use high grade bolts that fit VERY tight. I will use this bar to mount my 5 pt harness when that day comes as well. here is a pic of something I would like to use.

 

It won't be legal if you're planning on racing it.

 

well what makes it legal on the side bar then? I figure I will go to the track about 2 or 3 times a year and mainly at special events only. I figure my car will run in the 11's. I just dont want my rollbar to become totally usless and unaeffective. Basically do you think it will hold up ina wreck(worse case senerio)

 

dont put your kids in a car with a cage. Ever. just think what would hapen if you smashed one of there heads into a steel bar at 40mph

 

once a cage is in the car it is a two seater unless the kids are in child seats. Imagine them hitting their head, legs, arms, etc on ANY of those bars

 

with the last two.. i have a cage in my car and its kinda scary driving it on the street.. without a helmet and harness, it would probably hurt you more than protect you.. thats the way i see it..

 

gee, you guys are making it sound like something IS going to happen. If the crossbar is not there and my kids are buckled in then it will be very hard for one of them to come in contact with the roll bar. The closest bar will be the hoop as it runs down sides of the car. I might take me kids in the car 1 or 2 times a month tops. I think I can live with myself putting the kids in the car knowing that there MAY be a slim chance something happens.

 

 

you think me putting my two kids in my car is any unsafer then putting them in cavilier? That car is even smaller and there heads are right on the side of the windows. your blowing this out of porportion here. last time I checked, a kid that was properly secured in his seat with a booster seat if need was not going to move foward that much if the seatbelt does its intended job. Either way guys, theres no way my kids will fit my bar. as it is now, all they can do is kick it with the feet.

 

Don't want to start an argument here but you just said it. They can kick the bar. That means they can break their legs. A roll bar is not there to protect you from scratches and bruises. It is to keep the car from crushing you. Your body is still going to move because of the forces acted upon it. If you can touch it it will touch you in a crash.

 

so, do you guys look down on people with hotrods with full cages that come pulling into a car show or cruising down the local strip with their kids and wife in them on a saturday night or something? no you dont even think about the rare possibility that the kids are beng put 2% closer to danger being in the car because it has bars inside of it. At least I buckle my kids up
I had no idea I would get this type of response from this but all well you guys are just being concerned and that good but I have made up my mind and I am not going to start an arguement on this topic. No offense taken BTW

 

anyway to answer your question.

yes, the pins will shear in a rollover, letting the main hoop collapse. i wouldnt trust them in the way you're describing.
plus, thats where your seatbelts mount to...
plus, its not NHRA legal (or IHRA, or SCCA, ect..) anyway

 

if the pins sheer in a rollover then wouldnt they sheer in a side collision. say someone t boned you right in the drivers door. These are advertised as a swing out kit for roll bars/cages.
Also, in my first sentence of this tread I said that this cage was mainly for looks only. If my car was running 10's then no I would even cut the bar out to install these. But with me doing nothing but daily driving with htis thing, I feellike having a removable crossbar is a good idea. especially when I need to get in there to do some work. its a PITA crwling under the bar.

 

Do what "YOU" want to do. It "YOUR" car man. if your not racing in sanctioned events/bracket racing at the track you should be fine. Depending on your tec guy. as you said You put it in for looks and to stiffen it up a little. Ive seen a few people do what you want to make it removable.

I just ask you DON'T put your kids in the back with the bar in. You readdy dont have much room From seat back to the bar is aprox. 15inches or so. Not much room at all.

 

If the kids or an adult has to go in the back then I will just remove the bar to lessen the chance of injury if something sould happen.

 

Door bars are not as much a part of structural integrity as the cross bar for the main hoop. That is why they can get away with it, but remember swing out bars are only legal until 11.99 if i remember correctly.

 

"A roll bar is required in any convertible running 13.99 seconds or quicker in the quarter mile, and in other cars beginning at 11.99"

so i think that the swing outs go to 11.49 and higher if im not mistaken

 

The most safe way in both case's, is to get another car!!!!!

This might sound crazy, but I have a Beautiful 87 IROC I cruise.
The other is an 82 z28 super gas, you can do what ever you want , screw cutting tube, thats just plain crazy.

Also when the racer is down at least you have another ready to enjoy.
PS I would have to lay my kids over the 40" Alum. tubs...LOL
Later
Rotten

 

Not flaming. I agree to willing to put your kids back there would be a lil nuts. However on the otherside of the coin what would be the difference from a sail panel versus a 3 inch piece of tubing? Rug burn. I would say our cars are not very safe at all, a 70mph crash and you prlly wouldnt survive at all. facts is facts. So I say go with it's your car, drive safe and pay attention.

Also the odds of a standard lap belt letting you move away from a roof in a rollover are slim to nill (I hear that argument about hanresses alot.) Physics would state that an object in motion stays in motion. anyone who can dodge a roof in a 40 mile an hour rollover is a god. When I rolled my tempo my mail seatbelt connector snapped and there was a crease in the roof where my head was.


Bottom line. Do it and use commonsense when loved ones are involved.

 

Why do you bother to ask for opinions if you're going to do what you're going to do anyways?

You already said you put the cage in your car mostly for looks. Which is stupid.

You've been told that it isn't safe to let your kids ride in the car.

But you think it's still ok.

You've been told that the pins aren't going to pass tech.

But you want to do it anyways.

Do whatever you're going to do. Just don't come in here looking for sympathy if you wreck it.

Mathius

 

I hope you NOT talking to me Mathius!!!! Dont come in here and throw your negitve 2 cents in here where its not needed. I asked for opinions both good and bad and I got them in a somewhat tactful manner. Then you come in here and run your stupid mouth off for no reason. Your post served no purpose AT ALL!!!

 

I had to chime in on this one. I'm a father of 2 and husband, who all in all has a need for speed just like the majority of us on here. I understand about wanting to take the wife and kids out on a cruise in your ride. My kids beg me to go for a ride in daddy's Camaro all the time. And my wife gets mad because I won't let her drive it. My car is setup more as a g-machine rather than a drag car, but the situation is all the same. Our cars damn near crumble on impact, but so do these newer cars that are literally built to do such. We can rag BOTTLEDZr28 about him riding in a car with cage that isn't providing the maximum structural integrity because he wants it for show. We can also rag on him about having his kids in a car that has something to provide structural support that in itself may injure them. But a broken leg is better than being dead, or am I wrong? There's the good and bad in everything we drive. Should I place my kids in a fullsize SUV and hope I don't have to do any tight last minute high speed manuevering? Or should I get them into a small sporty car that will crumble on impact. The SUV could roll over but it'll hold up in an a crash. The car will be able to get out of harm's way if need be, but will probably be your coffin in a crash. It's a losing battle. Me personally, to hell with comfort, if the car is built to run, then do what's needed to make it run and keep you safe. If it's built for comfort and show, then don't make it fast!

 

I thought I made that clear IN my post. You're going to do whatever you want to no matter how ill-advised, or irresponsible that may be.

Mathius

 

i have never hit my head on mine but came close

 

I'd be more scared of a 3rd gen camaro dash than a bar.

 

lucky you.. the aftermarket seats in my car are a bit higher than my stockers and with my helmet on, i am about 1/2 inch away in the relaxed position.. no helmet, i lean my head over a bit and it touches.. and i'm only 5'9".. but a rather long torso..

 

Huh… 5’9”, try being 6’4” and a BIG boy at that… Hard top cars I have to lower the seats to the floor just to be able to put a helmet, I just barely clear the glass in a t-top car, and to follow the letter of the rules about bars/cages my main hoop would have to be outside the car.

You may want to look at accident statistics a little more… for their size, f-bodies are real tanks compared to most of what is on the road. There’s a ton of them, and their driver’s cruising around the roads that would have totaled both the car and put the driver in the hospital in another car.

A great example is that my brother and I were both in very similar accidents where the car was T-boned right at the front of the passenger side door, in both cases by someone that ran a light/stop sigh without stopping, in both cases the accident investigator found that the other car was going between 45 and 55 and hit the brakes at about the same time (I this couldn’t really have worked out better for a case study, it’s like it was setup to be similar). I was in a 3rd gen TA, he was in a newer Audi A6.

The A6 was totaled, most of the passenger side front suspension was completely removed from the car (when I got there they were moving the car out of the street and the wheel/brake/strut/spring was sitting there disconnected from the car and the fender was next to them. The “safety cage” was completely messed up, the foor and the roof buckled to the point that the floor was on the ground, both front and rear windows cracked… (interestingly when he got rear ended in his A4 it had similar damage).

My TA, well looks like the door and the fender absorbed most of the energy, structurally, the front of the rocker was messed up and the door pillar was hit squarely and moved a few inches in (donno, may be 3”, don’t have good pictures). Interestingly, I had the car on a frame machine prior to that and found that all the points were within spec but one that was 1/8” out of where it should have been, which after this impact was on the other end of the range but now it was actually within spec. I actually drove the car away from the accident, only to find that the impact was hard enough that it ripped the alternator belt. What I really can’t believe is that the harness didn’t get messed up. It runs right though the passenger side fender right in that area and that area was completely flattened, the harness was actually hanging out of the hole left where the TA fender vent would have been, the metal around it crushed in, but not a wire was messed up in it.

WRT to what happened to us… well, again, I drove away from the accident, but about a week later I found that I had a concussion from my head hitting the bar between the t-tops, and obviously I had the normal soreness everywhere for the next few days. My brother… he got taken to the hospital in an ambulance, broke his back in 2 places and ended up having to get 4 vertebra surgically fused. He also had the “normal” injuries, burns and some bruising from the air bags and some bruising from where he bounced off the door/wheel.

Back to accident statistics, yes, f-bodies have always had awful numbers, but it is not because they’re unsafe, too the contrary, but instead that the drivers are many times more likely to be young males doing something completely insane resulting in accidents that you would rarely see in other vehicles.

 

If anyone needs an example of this, take a walk through one of the larger junkyards dedicated to F bodies, or just muscle cars in general. 19 out of 20 cars will have front end damage. That doesn't happen from being too quick on the brakes.

 

I would have to strongly agree with this. After all, I (when I was way younger and a lot more stupid) put an 87 Iroc Z28 150 feet into a corn field. It was the bar owner's car too. He was tending bar that night and I had been drinking. He asked me to take it for a spin to check out a miss.

Well I almost killed myself and it wasn't because the car was structurally a weak design. It was my own stupid decision to drive after drinking and then to "drive it like I stole it".

Lucky for me there was minimal damage to the car, none to me, and those days are over.

 

I would rather have the dash than the steering wheel, which in turn was better than my friend and my CD-changer he almost got scalped with. 19 staples later.....

 

Cage it...My GTA will be getting 6 pt street cage, with the low door bars.

Oh, forgot to mention...My daughter still rides in her car seat, despite technically being tall enough not to have to...two and a half years ago she was eligible for the mere booster seat...now she's back in a 5 pt car seat.

The seat saved her. Notice the side of the car being not 6" from her car seat? And the blood on the right arm rest? A 6 pt cage could have saved her mom. Instead we were both ejected out the driver's side, into the road. Her mom was on the passenger side.

Broken bones are better than death...