Good info here. I have debated (only in my mind) for years about putting one in mine. Mine is a street only car, but mainly wanted it to cover the lack of crumble zones and for side impact protection (not bullet-proof, but better than nothing approach). The challenge with my car is the chopped top. I assume that only leaves me with the option of a custom built cage...and hunting down someone in the area that can do it and is willing to do it at a reasonable price.

Thanks, I have a rear sway bar from Topline, urethane bushsings and trans mounts along with big shocks off a truck!

And Thanks to Clive for the excellent info. That is pretty much what i had in mind, there is no back seat in this so that wont be a problem. I think i'm going to weld a cross tube in the middle of the roll bar and then weld tubes to where the heater tubes would be (under the back seat area) going down diagnally from the cross bar.

I am also conscious that the bug was not designed with modern crumple zone protection but here is an example of the value of a full roll cage in protecting the occupants from a serious impact.

In 1980 I was chief marshal on our car club's restricted status road rally. On one section through the Leicestershire countryside one of the front running Ford Escort RS2000 flat fronts slipped slightly off the single track road onto the flat verge. The soft verge pulled the car completely off the road and it skated along at around 90-100mph on sodden wet grass. It went through the 18" thick brick buttress of a barn and came to a halt (as you would expect) before it hit the next buttress. The buttress had a neat car shaped hole in it just like in a cartoon. The car wing was non-existant with the headlamp buried behind the speedo. The driver got out with a shattered ankle that needed hospital treatment but the navigator was unscathed but looking quite pale.
The Mk2 Escort was designed in 1970's and had only a modicum of front crash protection so without any additional protection you could have seen some horiffic injuries. The cage saved any further injuries, the front leg taking the impact and distributing it back via the door bar to the rear hoop that was multi-pointed. From that point on I realised the value of roll cages.

Clive

'Yeah, but that sort of thing would never happen to me you know'.... :rolleyes:

My cage has been payed for and ordered now, so its patience time... (hate that)

Wally (or other German speaking folks),

Would you mind translating the options for me? Using google translate I've done my best guess...but I'm not sure on all of them:

600.004 Bügelpolsterung Kopfbereich - ???
600.007 Käfig-Anbauteil (bei Bestellung Hauptbügel anliefern) - Cage attachment? Not sure what this is.
600.011 Querstrebe im Hauptbügel Querstrebe im Hauptbügel - Crossbar - Harness bar in the Main Hoop?
600.014 Diagonalstrebe mit Gabelkopfbefestigung - Transmission Tunnel Bracing? Google Translate says "diagonal with clevis mounting"

Much appreciated if you wouldn't mind!

-Dave

I'll give it a try ;)
004: Its the bar padding for the bars that run in close proximity of your head.
007: Its a Cage (Käfig) part that is connected to the cage ('when ordering, include the main hoop'; I suppose to make sure it fits)
011: Cross-bar in main hoop
014: Its the diagonal (queer) bar with a bolt-in/on connection. The "Gabelkopf" is probably the same (connection) as the ones you see on the 'Cup strebe' bars and for instance the door bars you can see on the pics of my Heigo cage in my project topic. The actual 'Diagonalstrebe' itself you can also see in those pics as it is bolted to the tunnel center ;)

Sweet, thanks!

So I guess I just need to figure out if "011: Cross-bar in main hoop" is what we would call a Harness Bar over here (horizontal bar through the main hoop.

-Dave

Diagonal is NOT horizontal... so no need finding out: it isn't!
I don't know where you got these numbers and text from, maybe that will explain more.
If its from Heigo, just look at their pictures that go with that text and it will explain most all I think. Again, if its from Heigo, they don't use a specific harness-bar in their standard cage set-ups.
Did you look at my pics yet?

Numbers and text have all been pulled from the Heigo webpage. That's the first time you've called it a diagonal though, "cross-bar" could be anything! :)

I have looked at your cage, and the Heigo website, and you don't have what I would call a Horizontal Harness bar:

http://members.rennlist.com/m758/cage01.jpg

It doesn't look like that's an option from Heigo, so I would either need to weld one in, or perhaps just do something local to this side of the pond. It looks like my Audi Rally car is going to get stripped and crushed, so I'm considering turning my '69 Beetle in to a Targa Rally car. But if I do that, I want a horizontal bar in the main hoop.

Thanks for your help!

-Dave

Your absolutely correct!
I noticed this too and have decided to weld-in those two pieces myself lateron ;)
The heigo cage fits so extremely well and close to the door pillars, that I will probably also just weld A- and B-pillar to the main hoops just for rigidity reasons.

Hi Dave,
Do you need the horizontal bar? The belts could just as effectively be located to fixings directly to the rear shelf. I am not overly impressed with the location of belts on the horizontal bar as it imparts a huge bending moment into the bar (the load would be ~6g for two 100kg bodies i.e. around 1.2T!) and the fixings on the main hoop. I realise that a number of competition cars have it and I can understand the theory where the only other fixing is on the rear seat deck that makes the belts overly long and operating at an angle. If I were choosing the ultimate cage for a bug I would still go for the rear deck fixing for the belts and then use a complete cross brace on the main hoop. No matter what I would still add multipoint fixings as Wally suggests to the cage so that the cage and bodyshell become a complete integral structure.

Clive

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/50/13...52020e5914.jpg

In my rally car we braced the harness bar to the tunnel, but in my next cage the harness bar will likely go into the main hoop. I've had the opportunity to "test" the belts, and they do stretch significantly :P. Due to the length increase, I'm likely to shorten the mounting points on my next car.

I'm definitley torn on this whole thing. It's a pain to ship to Canada, but based on your photos it _does_ fit really well to the B-Pillars. I'd be looking at doing just the roll bar and want to keep it a bolt-in feature. So I need to make some choices on whether it's easier just to have the rally shop do the bug, or order a bolt-in.

-Dave