Hey guys, I am wanting to upgrade my 6 point cage to a 8 point so I can get inspected and run faster than 9.99. I had bought the jegster 4 point and installed that. Then I measured and had bars cut and made to fit in the car so I could have a 6 point. All was well until I decided to throw nitrous on the car. Now I need to upgrade again to a 8 or 10 point cage. I am trying to avoid cutting my dash at all cost. Its a street car that I cruise in on the weekends and race too. I was looking at the jegster 8 to 10 point conversion kit for the third gens.

http://www.jegs.com/i/Jegster/550/50...oductId=753173

Can I make this work without cutting my dash?



Here's where the car is right now. I just want to know if the bars will clear the dash and still pass tech. We have a very easy to pass tech here.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks

Dustin

 

pull the dash and go behind it. tuck the bars up agains the a-pillars as close as you can, then put the dash back in, and trim just what you need off the dash pad. i recommend getting those bars bent custom. the jegs kit leaves a lot to be desired.

 

Trouble with doing an upgrade is you're never sure if the old rollbar is up to spec. To get into the 9's, you better make sure the tubes that are currently in the car will meet the minimum specs and pass a chassis certification. They'll be 1-3/4 OD but is the wall thickness thick enough? Some of those 4 or 6 point roll bars may be made from .095" wall tubing. To go into the 9's, minimum thickness is .118" which means you need at least .120" DOM to make the specs.

Also with a full cage, you can get away with 1-5/8" tubing so you might be better off just cutting out the old roll bar and installing a new full cage. If you only spend money to do an upgrade and if fails a chassis cert, you'll be cutting it out to redo properly.

 

the jegs 4 and 6 pt kits are 1 3/4" .125" DOM mild steel

 

So the only disadvantage to converting the roll bar to a full cage would be the extra weight of the larger tubes.

 

I want to avoid cutting into my precious dash. I guess i will get some custom bent pipes. There are no rules about benting the bars around the dash are there?

 

no, the old s&w kit puts it down in front of the dash. just harder to get into the car, and it doesn't look as clean.

 

S&W has bent A-pillar tubes but they don't have to go through the dash. It's fairly common to have the tubes behind the dash out in plain view. Because they'll be positioned back farther, as mentioned above, it will just be a little hard getting in and out of the car.

 

The best positioning of those bars is behind the dash though. Your knees will be thanking you, instead of that bar clunking into them all the time

 

Sorry, whats the name or a link to s&w website. Thanks alot guys.

 

http://www.swracecars.com/

 

When I rebuilt my cage, I ordered the prebent tubes from S&W. I got the main hoop, halo bar and bent a-pillar tubes to go around the dash. The rest of the cage is straight tubes so I didn't need to have them shipped across the border. I didn't like how the a-pillar bars were going to be positioned so I redid the design and used the bent tubes somewhere else.

 

How did the s&w kit fit overall? I thought about getting they're 10 point kit but don't want to tear it out cause it doesn't fit tight. Anyone know how the thru-dash kit fit?

 

S&W kits probably fit better than most. Since I'm only using their main hoop and halo bar, how it fits in my car is fine.

 

I'm sure you guys know this already.All depends on what you make it and what equipment and skills you have.

 

Yeah, its really up to the installer how well it fits.

 

Does anyone know how well S&W cage parts mate up to the Jegster kit?

 

All you got to remember is no matter who your buying from,your getting a bunch of tubes banned together that are "alittle" longer than you need them to be.The rest is up to you to fish mouth them to a tight seam and it one hell alot better as you adjusting the lengths and angles to be alittle longer because you can't add material back on.Remember the welds are supposed to fuse the tubes together and not fillers of bad seams.It doesn't hurt to order a box of gussets adding them in too.

 

Went ahead and bit the bullet and bought the jegs conversion kit. Im going through the dash because of you bastards lol. Ill try to have it in this weekend. Expect pictures to follow.

 

Jegs also carries various other size DOM tubing that can be made to your specs.

 

I got the roll bar put in all the way last night.The Halo bar didnt have to be trimmed at all surprisingly. The down bars on the other hand not even close.I had to bend them to 45* from the 100* bend they came with. I also had to put 2 bends at the top near the halo to get everything lines up. I finally got everything in and welded the bottom and now I just need to welding in some gussets that I bought from jegs since I cant weld the bars 100% due to roof clearances.

Another funny thing Id like to point out is, The 82-92 fbody kit is the same as the 70-81 f body kit on my drag car.


Heres is a picture of it all in. Also Id like to point out with all my HVAC removed, The kit fits behind the dash without cutting anything.

 

I can't tell from the pix's.Did you finish weld the joints already??.

 

Yea, I welded as much of the joint as you can get access too, I bought gussets to put in as the NHRA rulebook says to.

 

 

Looking great so far!

 

Looks great, did you tack the halo to the main hoop then drop the pillars/halo and fully weld them? That way you'd have full welds around the pillar/halo and just have to add gussets to the main hoop and halo connections.

 

Where were you yesterday? I actually tackled the halo in then I bent the down bars. All custom unfortunately.

 

haha just the way i've done the pre bent cages in the past, also I know the comp. engineering kit I did had the pillar bars run into the bend area of the halo and no extra bending was necessary, but your halo looks narrower than the ones I've done in the past. I wonder if it's just the camera angles.

 

You are correct. It actually bends in about 10" from where it attaches to the main hoop. Like I said, it is the same kit that's on my 78 Camaro drag car

 

So does anyone make a decent fitting prebent kit?

Probably will be a 8-10 point.

 

s&w is on the nicer side of things, doing a 10 point right now for a buddy in his 4th gen. Just need to realize that both ends of tubing will need to shortened and notched to put the kit together. But the bends are in the right places and overall fit is very nice.

 

All I know is the jegs kit wasnt even close haha