Not picking on you or your build, but that bar will do nothing in a rollover, except fold like a wet noodle. Maybe you're not finished adding the other bars? It needs rear bracing, and lower bracing of the main bar, hence the "6 points". And to be "legal", being an open car, it needs to have a full cage anyway. Yeah, that really ruins the look, but that's the rules....unless of course it's an unsanctioned event, but even then it will come down to track owner or officials, and they have their own insurance and liability to consider. Not something they usually take lightly unless they want to risk everything. As far as padding, same thing. Padding will keep you from saying "Ow" when you boink your head getting in and out, but do nothing in an accident. This is not something to take lightly, guys. IF you're going to race your car, and it's fast enough to meet the rule requirements, then you need to take this seriously. I've watched quite a few guys walk away from bad accidents because they took it serious. If they didn't, they would be dead. If you don't, well, make sure your next of kin is taken care of. The dangers of a race car on the street are very real, as far as head damage with contact to a bar. And while wearing each point of a 4+ restraint system is a must, you won't be wearing a helmet on the street. What a person can do is add some padded rests on contact points, or use one of the seats shown above, that goes above the shoulder and protects the head. That has it's own drawbacks with visibility, so good mirrors are a must in that situation....and just hope you don't have to reverse. Lots of guys saying they've gotten away with this and that for years, and they will....until they don't. It only takes one failed part out of a hundred to send you into a guardrail, or barrel rolling across a field. Then again, if we were smart, we wouldn't spend tens of thousands of dollars just to risk everything.
Though I suggested it might qualify for the Street Brawler thread, I've never even considered taking my little fwd hatchback to a track. It just doesn't speak the same EFI, computer-controlled language that is spoken in the local circles. If the A project ever manifests in objective reality, that would be even further from the local norms. So what I've got to say applies purely to a street situation. A three-point seat belt with sound mountings to the car's structure saved my ass more than once during my wayward youth. My view is that that is the overwhelming bulk of what you need, and anything you add above and beyond that delivers more or less diminishing returns. I've never owned a car equipped with airbags, and I probably never will. There was a nasty collision in our street last week, where a seat-side airbag deployment probably spared a young woman some serious injuries, so the value is real. But I still believe the "we die like men" trope is stupid and unfair. The absence of airbags doesn't make a car a deathtrap. It is possible to calculate the rigidity of a sanctioned roll cage in three axes. It is harder to calculate the rigidity of an original body, but it is likely to be so flimsy that it makes sense to ignore it. It is possible, if you're clever, to add rigidity to an original body so that it is structurally equivalent to a sanctioned roll cage. I've heard about factory racing teams submitting FEA on unibodies to argue why their cages are missing members required by rules, in order to save weight. That isn't an option for you and me. I suspect that a lot in rollbar rules is written as it is to make scrutineering possible. A cage hidden between inner and outer body panels can't be inspected — though it might hypothetically be safer. Likewise, I suspect that roll bars and cages are required to be made out of round tubing not because it's stronger — square tubing of the same linear weight is either equivalent or stronger in every plane, and a bit weaker only in torsion — but because there is basically one proper way to join round tubes, and that not only limits stress risers to only two very small zones, you can identify it as the proper way just by looking at it. All the wrong ways are immediately visible too. A safety inspector can tell the difference at a glance. (Edit: there is of course the issue of bends. Unless you're into the Tesla truck aesthetic you're probably going to want bends in your rollbar or cage. Bending square or rectangular tubing, especially to tighter radii, can result in far greater losses of section modulus in the bent part than with round tubing, unless relatively involved bending methods are used. Good bends can certainly be done, though.) But it is certainly possible to design out the much larger zones subject to stress risers with square or rectangular tubing. It requires a bit of cleverness in the detailing. So if having to pass scrutineering by a race sanctioning body isn't an issue, and you know what you're doing (it isn't magic) engineering the body is certainly an option. The advantage of there being rollbar/cage rules is that, if sanctioned rollbars and cages are deemed to be safe, you have figures to work to. It's called heuristics. There is no need to calculate deformation rates under impact or inertia, or any of that seriously tricky stuff. In the same way seat belt tensile ratings are known. If you keep in mind that seat belts can sometimes hold several times their rating in real life, you can at least get an idea of the point where it makes no sense to make things stronger.
How fast you're going when something bad happens, is why adding above and beyond is important. At lower speeds, it's diminishing returns. At higher speeds, it's necessary.
So, no one asked the bigger question....What are we thinking about building Danny? Inquiring minds want to know.
For my current cobbled up mess(1939 Plymouth)...I bought a JEGs kit for less than I could have bought the pipe for...this is supposed to look like an old roundy round from 1965 era... The more I look at it the more it doesn't look like that era....but it is mostly all installed so we will see come spring how it works out...
Root, I have had this in the back of my head since I was 16 years old, and I'm a lot older now. The desire to build a car that wouldn't break the bank just to buy a project but also something that I like, My first car was a 1932 5 window coupe, but that was short lived. My next car was $300 dollar '54 Ford sedan, it had a straight six and a 3 on the tree, I blew up the engine in less than a week and with help from a friend and my Granddad we installed a 390 and a automatic transmission. This car was destroyed when a elderly lady in a '48 Dodge pulled out in front of me and trying to avoid hitting her I hit the curb and with the help of a telephone pole guy wire I did a couple of barrel rolls in the middle of main street ending up on the roof. For years I thought about that car and built a lot of cars, mostly 30's through '40's. The real itch came back as I was building Brenda's '54 wagon and have been secretly looking at Crag's list and market place on Brenda's FB site. I recently ran across a relatively straight, rust free basket case '54 Ford coupe, I have made a offer, ball is in his court. I just want to build a simple hot rod, I don't have any delusions of grandeur and see myself competing in sanctioned events like NHRA or SEGA. Thank all of you guys for keeping this thread on track and offering common sense opinions and suggestions. HRP
I had a aftermarket roll bar on my street car and my insurance company canceled me because they assumed I was going to race it
I guess I see the logic. They either think you are going to race it or you think you may roll it. Either way, they lose. The actuaries say you are a risk. Lord knows those pencil pushers have to be right.... Insurance companies have to be owned by the mob. Only business where they can make you pay for protection.
After my years of being 'restrained' in a Sprint car, I discovered that rollbar padding helped you look better than you felt. Kinda like when a cop used a phone book instead of his night stick. Your ribs/knees were still cracked, but you weren't as black and blue.
And SFI 45.1 padding is the biggest joke of all. We are required to use it at Bonneville for the SCTA. Did you know that a pine 2x4 can pass the same test as SFI cage padding?! The gent that was selling the now defunct Orange Aid padding clued me in on that. It was a much better option.
A good option for a street driven car Dual Durometer SFI 45.1 Roll Bar Padding - Pegasus Auto Racing Supplies
Dale Earnhardt Jr. has a great evaluation of the current NASCAR containment seats and padding. I’ll agree with Tman about SFI 45.1 that it feels like a piece of wood and wonder how much good it does when the helmet comes in contact with it. If someone here has driven a fairly current car with NHRA tight padded cage with violent tire shake I’d like to hear their comments. To me a 4 point harness is useless without the 5th point.
Make sure shop, or person doing roll cage knows the rule book, or you will spend $$ learning what scrap iron looks like. - learned that lesson first hand. - went to the best, second time.
Personally, my shop/me would never do a street driven roll bar, too much liability at stake from drivers doing stupid things and greedy lawyers. Main reason the aftermarket truck industry changed the name to "Light Bars" instead of "Rollbars"
The safety concerns of today are not traditional. Only drive on streets built before 65 and you will be ok. In reality it’s hard to roll bar a model A pickup and not be close to bars. It’s hard to bar an open car and keep any kind of traditional look while meeting today’s safety standards. If you want to go really fast safely it’s far better to start with better OT donors. Our traditional type clones are better suited for off track use.
This is BS (not you, the insurance company). I race my OT car, and have $70k insurance on it. Just not while I'm racing. On the street, I'm covered. At the track....I'm shit out of luck. Find another company that understands vintage cars.
To expound on what I said above, upwards of 400 cars a year are involved with Drag Week alone. They are ALL covered on the street with insurance. Some of them are all tube 5 and 6 second capable cars at over 250 mph. This is just one Drag & Drive event, of which there are many now.
When I was in my 20’s, I got a VW based buggy with a complete cage. First time out off road, I hit my head on the overhead bar, more than once. No helmet, just my hard head! Went to the hardware store and bought some of that split foam you put on pipes to keep them from freezing. Got two different sizes so I could double the padding. Wasn’t a perfect fix, but it made the occasional head bump a lot softer. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. Didn’t know where I could get the legal bar padding at the time, so I improvised. Not saying do as I did, just saying some kind of padding is better than nothing.
My policy has a disclaimer that says my policy is void if the vehicle is damaged during a competition event. I like that. A 4-point harness is more prone to occupant submarining in a head-on crash since the shoulder straps will raise the lap belt as you slam forward. Moi aussi.
It was not ever my intention to race it, it was only for the "COOL" look, But I put a claim in because somebody ran into me and the adjuster saw it, and ratted me out. A racing harness can get you a ticket because the Vehicle code says that the belts used must be DOT approved
Most of the accidents I see rarely end up with cars on their roof. I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't pay more attention to side impact protection, though it would be tough to come up with something effective against being T-boned by a late model Canyonero.....
I think it would also depend on the vehicle year and whether it originally had seat belts at all. Can't imagine an insurance company that wouldn't prefer harnesses to no belts at all?
The bigger issue I've seen with people retrofitting a car that either came without seat belts or were upgraded with "safety" belts, is the methods of attachment to the floorpan. There was a Cobra clone local to me that was involved in a dual fatality accident where both passengers were ejected from the car still strapped in their seats. The scariest part was that I had been testing the seats in this same car for ideas for my roadster while at a car show some months prior to this accident and had been offered to take a ride in the car!!!
Even more so, the officer involved. Any law enforcement officer who would issue a ticket based solely on that DOT rule would have to be a brick shy of having a lick of common sense. And yes, mounting is extremely important. Seats AND belts need reinforcement plates under/behind all mounting points. And plywood floors....I just wouldn't even go there.
The Jalopy Journal
