Going to try and tackle putting in a roll bar this weekend or at least get a good start at it. I have the 6x6 plates and the tubing, making my own stuff so this is not a kit. I have a tubing bender with the 1 3/4 die and tubing notcher. Those of you who have done their own or seen it done, was there a problem with the paint or other stuff catching fire on the underside of the car welding the plates on? Did you drop the fuel tank or leave it in place when welding those rear down tube plates? (that kinda worries me) Any other tips, tricks or things you like to do? Thanks

 

Will that tubing bender bend without crimping the tubes ?

You should do a TIGHT install, I'm tired of all the "I'M SHOWING MY CAGE" installs, I'd like to see more roll bars installed tight inside slightly enlarged a-pillars and so on.

 

Very slight distortion in the tube, almost not noticeable. Nothing like a pipe bender (kinker). This was one of my little projects for my 4x4 earlier in the year.

 

i stripped my interior and dropped the tank.. just for safety.. i also covered all the glass and rolled the windows down with a heavy blanket over the door.. as for paint catching on fire, a bit of under coating caught but thats it.. just dont forget to strip the metal you are welding to.. all the paint within 2 inches of the bead has to go or it will bubble and smoke.. most importantly, take your time.. measure three times, cut once..

btw, nice tubing bender.. how much she set you back?? and since when did you hit 11.8's?? jeez.. last i remember you just hit 11.9

 

Did 11.87 this past weekend The bender and one die set cost me 689 + a lot of shipping. Bought a couple other things too so all together I've got probably $1,300 just in bending and notching tools which isn't all that bad.

 

Little trick I used was to cut a hole in the floor to allow the main hoop to drop down through the bottom of the car. This allowed you to get a good weld on the rear down bars and install the head liner before you lift up the main hoop and slide the plates under the tubes. On framed cars I drill a hole clear through the top and bottom of the frame and then leave the main hoop long enough to make a weld on the top and bottom of the frame. This creates a better interface between the cage and frame.

This makes welding the plates in a little more difficult, but you can litteraly get the hoop within a 1/4" of the interior.

 

If you can bend tubing that well, HELL go ahead and start making chopper frames *L*, those are some nice bends.

 

i have some pics on my cardomain site in sig. Took 2 weekends of 6 hour days to complete.

 

Steve, I gotta one up ya here buddy I bought the Jegster kit, and from the time we turned the lights on in the garage, until the last coat of paint was applied....5hrs, granted only a 8 point, but I was impressed with the kit.

Gut the interior completely, everything. Cover/protect the glass-roll the windows down in the doors, and keep cardboard handy for the windsheild, otherwise a stray spark will melt a pit in it...only there will be alot of pits.

When instaling the 6x6 plates I used the liquid wrench to heat them up and mold them to the contour of the floor pan in the location I placed the hoop and door bars where they meet the floor.

grind until the metal is perfectly clean, and like mentioned above, go at least 6" away from weld are if you dont want the paint/seam sealer smoking and burning. For the rear down bars, I just took my time and stitch welded the plated, I had both positioned/tacked, then would weld an inch on one, jump the the other an weld and inch there, jump back to first one and weld an inch on opposite side of very first weld...so on and so forth. I made sure I had a full tank of gas in the tank to cut down onfume accumulation. Realistically, so long as you dont burn through, leaving the tank in is no big deal....think about a proper weld, what happens on the back side of the base material your welding onto....it turns red....no sparks, no fire, etc...only thing I wish I would've done, was throw out the Jegs rear down bars and had the local tubing god bend some tubes that woudl've hugged the hatch so I could've retained my back seat.

Make sure you keep your door panels near by for fitting your door bars, this way you can tack a bar in place, set your door panel back on and check clearances.

Depending on what your doing, from experience, do the ful monte now 10 point, and you might as well do the funny car cage as well....sure extreme overkill, but it beats doing this all over again in the future when you outgrow this current stage your at.

 

actually there's a guy who just moved to town into a friend's shop that will be building choppers. He's also got a CNC machine that will handle wheel blanks

BMmonteSS, I thought about doing that or if possible, tack the hoop in place, tack on the rear down bars and then tilt the whole thing forward as far as I can to get the tops. Then tilt it back into place and weld to the plates. Might be possible with the T-tops. Or not even have to tilt it, just scoot the whole thing forward, finish weld and scoot it back.

IHI, about the 10 point. I really don't want to add any more weight than I am plus there's no plans right now to run quick enough to require a 10 point. 10.00 is the cut off point right? If that time comes, I'll cut this one out and re-do it all in 1 5/8 tubing. About the quickest I see myself going in this car is possibly 10.60's.

Thanks for all the input so far guys

 

That's what I'm tell'n ya...right now you dont "plan" to go much faster, right now I have to assume your young, free, single, nobody really depending on you being around, so if you get in a wreck on the track and get killed, you dont have your own wife/kids to worry about. I was the same way when I first started years ago, but once ya get a little older (I'm only 32) and completely grasp the reality of how fast your truely going and the damage that can incur even at speeds between 100mph...and your "planning to eventually" be in the 130mph range....it does'nt take much to do ALOT of damage. You roll a car and have enough luck to put that thing on the guardrail while it's barrel rolling without a 10 point.....where do you honestly think that windsheild and roof is going to go....right in your face/lap. Then if you live and are just paralysed, at least you could tell people, well hey, I went .04 quicker though cuz I did'nt put the halo and front down bars in.

Listen, i'm not trying to lecture or stand on a soap box. I was in your shoes one time too, so I'm just trying to make your life easier down the road....I never planned on going as fast as I will shortly...but guess what, here I am and I get to tear everythig back out of the car and redo/add onto the cage for my personal safety reasons....if ya choose to only go 8 point...be sure to email me direct in 3-4 years when you understand where I'm coming from and decide to do it later... Getting older sucks, but also lets you see alot of other things and what can happen first hand so you can prevent that from happening to you.

 

I'll have to ask a buddy of mine who survived a nasty wreck at the track what kind of bar/cage he had. He crashed at the end of the track and went end over end a couple times then slid on the roof for a while. Right now he's only running an 8 point in a car that's doing 11.1x's 120+ mph.

I do understand your concern though, I'm 29 so not too far behind you I'd have to get a 1 5/8 die, buy more material, and cut up the nice dash for the front bars Kinda funny that I want to put a cage inside my 4x4 for rollovers and not my car that has gone 120 mph I'll give it some thought.

 

Now that is funny LMAO!!!

Seriously though, your not adding a bunch of weight with just 3 additional bars, and if you dont want to think of it as protecting your azz, think about it in the sense that, "I'm right here right now tooled up to do this cage....do I really want to tear everything back out of the car later, retool, and do this all over again for the extra 40lbs it may add and the extra hr at most it may take to fit and weld it in"

It's one of those things you can do it now and life is cherries, or you can kick yourself later and think, how stupid was I for not just doing it back then.

Currently I'm redoing my fuel system, the nice thing is I planned years ago when I first installed it for growth....life is soooo nice since everything is in place, just a matter of swapping out hard parts...setting yourself up for things later down the road...priceless, if you have'nt learned yet...you will

 

well put IHI.. i'm only 19 but i understand all that.. thats mainly the reason i got a 10pt for my car instead of the 8pt.. i even installed it and i'm still only in the 12's.. lol but i know i'll be going faster eventually.. i even got racing seats with 5pt harnesses.. i feel more comfortable driving around in the birdy than my s-10.. safety wise.. actually my dad brought up the idea of the cage.. because we were supposed to be in the mid 11's with the past motor but it threw a rod.. see sig.. i guess kids do make you think more about your life and theirs..

 

LOL, well kids and family make ya grow up quickly, heck, it was only 6 years ago when I was in the heat of wanting to drag race, go faster, etc...and I gave no second thought to doing what was necessary at the time to get by, with the, "I'll just do that later if I need to" state of mind.....well, after you "do that later" a few times, you learn real quickly it would've been alot faster/easier initally since your set-up doing that aspect anyhow to just have done it full out and be done with it, instead of having to take 3 steps backwards before you start the mod you shoulda done then; now.....I guess it's more/less a life experience thing, and I can completely understand EvilCartman's point, but I know he's been modding and going faster ever since I've read his posts, so it's not a matter of if he'll go faster, but when...and I promise if he short cuts himself now, he's gonna be giving himself a series of serious kicks in his azz later when the whole "it might not be a bad idea to build a safer car instead of a faster car" kicks in LMFAO!!

I preach and preach about trying to do things right the first time, cuz the only people that can afford to be cheap, are rich ones.....they can afford to do things twice.

 

Well, I wanted to accomplish something so I took some rough measurements and came up with this. I know, not much to look at but it's something. Probably tweak it a bit when the interior comes out and I know how much room there really is for the bottom legs. Dunno when I'll be rippin into stuff, maybe not till July

 

http://www.ws6transam.org/rollbar_p1.htm

Enjoy!

 

Oooh nice, thanks for the link

 

If it is a street car, don't do 10 points. My best friend smacked his head on the halo, by accident when he was getting out his car, knocked him on his *** and all most knocked him out cold. Those bars have no give to them, and steel will all ways win. If the force from just standing up all most knocked him out, imagine a accident. It opened my eyes to the danger of those bars. 10 points are for race cars where you are straped in and wearing a helmet.

 

I am curious to know what brand of bender that you purchased? I am going to assume that it is a manual bender and not air over hyd.

Is it a 90 degree bender or 180 degree bender? Lets see a picture of it.

 

That's why they madate padding anywhere your helmet/head can touch, typically a 3' area around the driver it has to be padded...just for this reason.

I've smacked my head on the door opening of my super duty...should all super duties be convertables?? common sense and being aware of your surroundings..anything can happen though, we're human. I would rather get a headache once than be crushed cuz some freak accident with an 8 point caused the roof to cave in and crush me. either way, to each his own, it's what makes us all "special"

 

You got a good point there. So for me and my car that sees more street than strip, I'll stay away from a halo and stay with just the roll bar. Others seem comfortable with a bar over there head and no helmet, that's just not for me

 

It's a JD2 Model 3 manual bender with the 180 degree die. I'd like to do a hydro conversion on it eventually but right now it doesn't get used enough. Haven't even used it in over a couple months I think Actually since the first part of February.

Only pic I can find at the moment. There's more on www.jd2.com I bought mine from www.tricktools.com since they have much better customer support than buying direct.



LIL BASTARD, I've hit my head more times than I want to think about getting in and out of my 4x4 but never in the car lol. With bars going every which way that might change but as IHI put it, that's what pads are for

 

GG thanks alot =)

 

I'd say go with the 10 point with padding. I had an 8 in my old camaro and am putting a 10 in the current firebird, that roof comes way to close for comfort..

And this was only at 45 mph, I can't imagine at 100 or 120.

 

Ouch! How'd you roll it?

 

I have the JD square model 4 bender with the air over hyd and the long stroke ram. I Love that thing. I have built 4 complete cages from scratch and some other things as well. Three of the cages were tig welded and one was mig welded. The guy that I built it for wanted to weld it together himself.

Trick tools has the best support and great customer service. I also have a bunch of their other products. I am not sure if you can convert the model 3 to power or not.

if you ever need any pointers feel free to send me a PM with any questions. I use the same software as you for doing my cages as well.

 

JD2 does have a hydro conversion for the Model 3 but they want way too much for it. Plenty of homebrew setups out there I can copy. By any chance are you on www.offroadfabnet.com ?

 

No I am not on that site. I will have to join it and post some pictures of some of that type of work I have done. Looks to be a pretty cool site though.

I had just ordered mine all set up with the HYD setup. I did not want to deal with making a conversion for it and other stuff. I also was ordering a few different die sets and they do not interchange between the 3 and the 4.

I was talking with one of my contacts back east and they have about 16 model 4 benders. One for every stall in their fab shop. They had said it was money well spent. I have been very happy with mine. It repeats on a dime and then some!

At the start of next year I am doing a complete 4130 tube frame for one of my other racecars. I wanted to get some bending time in before I started on that project.

 

That site sure has helped a newbie like me make stuff with the bender and figure out the program. Cris is on there as fabcam, he's pretty dang quick at helping people out with problems. Sent me a patch for bend tech to fix a cutting problem within a couple hours of my message. 16 model 4's checked the price out and wow, hope they got a volume discount haha. Looking forward to seeing some of your work

 

Some lady pulled out in front of me across 3 lanes of trafic, I avoided hitting her but lost it coming out of the hard turn I had to do and slid into a curb. Both wheels on the passenger side cought it and rolled.. Always sucks how something you put so much time and money into can be destroyed so fast from one persons stupid decision.

 

and since you avoided hitting her that means her insurance won't pay for damages.

 

I have not been working on the 82 for a bit due to the new job and schooling required for it. If you look under the fabrication section under 1982 silver state project you can see quite a bit of stuff I have made with the bender and also pictures of the bender in use.

I will get some pictures up on that site of the 4wd stuff I have built. 4WD's are great to learn on as they do not need the precision fit that is required for door cars.

 

It's not just 4x4 stuff, there's a race car section but not much of one. Gonna head over to see your silver state project.

Edit: Just had a look at the thread and nice work That exhaust is exactly what I want to do with mine. I'm going to build a new crossmember to tuck stuff up higher, dual 3 inch tube from the headers to the single 4 inch just like you've done.

 

Hey,

Did you start on your roll bar/cage? Any pictures yet?

Do tell.