History Vintage/period correct roll bar photo thread

As a fan, and builder of vintage racing and race cars I would like to see and document the early days of rollbars/cages and how they were built.

I am not looking for modern top fuel cages, or modern stock car cages, but good old style 1950 and 1960s style rollbars.



Modern clone of an early 60's Lou Lazzaro N.A.S.C.A.R Sportsman, square tube roll cage built like the original car.

 

I can’t add anything except cool thread , and this car gets me all tingly

 

Too bad I didn't take pictures of the 1st and 2nd dirt cars I owned. The first was a 55 Ford sedan built by ??? In the mid 60's, and I bought as a 15 year old (and my mom was pissed...). The cage was made from HUGE pipe, probably 2-inch. Cut and mitered corners with various thicknesses of plate made into gussets on all of those corners. The only good thing about it was the aircraft bucket seat and the gauges. Oh and the wheels were eventually useful. Lennie Bona used them to make me new wheels for the 54s. It came with 4 on the car and 4 inside...

The second car was a 57 Chevy hardtop, and it's rollcage was made from 2-inch square tubing, sourced evidently from highway supply... yup signpost material. Also mitered corners but at least it was gussetted with same thickness and dimensions plate. And the welds actually looked like good welds, not bird droppings. I was 17 by then. It made it to the Valley in the spring of 72. And it actually finished some races!

I didn't own another car until I was 20, when I built the first modified 54, the 37 Chevy coach bodied modified. Ahh, those were the days

 

T.V. Tommy Ivo's T

 

Bill Strickland T

 

It’s a shoulder bar. Allowed by the SCTA a few years prior to the one even with the top of the helmet.

 

Thanks @jimmy six but was was the point of it ?

unless Danny Devito’s driving it’s kinda pointless , unless I’m missing something ?

 

When 230 HP was something to brag about, you really didn't need a lot of roll bar, eh?

Keep them coming, they're great!

 

Come on I can't believe I am the only person who thinks this stuff is cool!

 

Pat Flaherty the 1956 Indy 500 winner

 

Dick Rathmann

 

Some of these look to keep the car rolling and rolling

 

As long as they do not collapse...

 

Tom McMullen's roadster

 

By the time I started racing roadsters in the mid '60s the NHRA was mandating that a diagonal had to be installed, either forward into the cab or rearward on to the back of the chassis. Not pretty, but not as ugly as some pictured here. Funny, at the time I didn't think it was inadequate protection.