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Old November 5th 2009, 20:49
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Humble Humble is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Boulder Creek, CA
Posts: 758
What roll cage you run really depends on your goal with the car. race car or street car?

A class 11 roll cage is okay (as in better than nothing) but there are better designs out there. NHRA, SCCA, and FIA all have different cage requirements, and like Clive said what works for one may not work for others. The FIA has several standards and everyone picks and chooses for their given safety requirements. Fore the most part an SCCA track cage is probably the best bet. If you look at my race cage it's a minimum spec SCCA cage. It started out as a weld in RLR cage and I made a couple additions to keep it legal.



The minimum (as of this posting) is a standard 6 point cage, main hoop, down bars, head bar, rear cage stays, main hoop diagonal, door X on the drivers side and single door bar for the passenger. For race purposes, as of July of this year SCCA and NASA, require you to tie your down bars to the A-pillars. I opted for a dash bar and passenger side door X since it's good to have equal protection for the passenger.

A couple rules of thumb for cages, 10 lbs per point and $100 per point but cost/weight go up when you start cross bracing. Having done a couple of pre-made cages (weld in and bolt in) I would highly recommend taking to a shop to have the cage installed. They have the proper tools, they've done it hundreds of times and they can get a super tight fit the first time. The shop can also design the cage for the specific car and driver. That never happens with bolt in or weld in cages. I like the RLR cage and it's a necessity, but I'll replace it with a much better custom cage down the road.
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