I picked the car up from Competition Cages this past Saturday and could not be more pleased. I had seen Chris's work in the past and knew that he did great work, but there is something even better about it when you are the customer rather than just a casual observer. I have to remind myself that it is actually my car when I look at it now.
The cage is a "typical" 6 point cage; two mounting points in the footwells, two behind the front seats, and two at the rear of the passenger compartment. We made some additions to improve strength and functionality as well. The main hoop is fairly normal with a single diagonal bar and harness bars inside it. Moving forward from the main hoop we decided to use A-pillar hoops on each side and connect them together with a bar across the top of the windshield and another bar on a diagonal from the main hoop on the driver's side to the A-pillar hoop at the windshield on the passenger's side. Foot protection bars and plates were added in each footwell.
As you will see, we decided on NASCAR-style door bars for the driver's side. This allowed us to gut the driver's door and push the bars out, creating more space around the driver's seat. Additionally, it gave us a place to anchor the vertical support bar coming down from the top of the A-pillar bar. A standard X-bar was used at the passenger's door opening.
In the rear we decided to run the rear downtubes to large mounting plates on the rear bulkhead. This area is much stiffer than the area of the wheel wells the old cage was connected to and should provide an nice increase in overall chassis stiffness and safety. From there we added something a little unconventional in the sports car cage world...a horizontal X connecting the downtube bases to the main hoop at the same node as the harness bar and door bars. A couple extra support bars above the seats and the cage was complete.
I think everything came out great. Chris executed the designs we discussed perfectly. The cage should make the car better dynamically and will certainly be safer. Hopefully I never get to find out how much safer it is. While the cage is certainly a very important part of a race car build, it is one you never want to use.
On to the pictures:
Driver's side NASCAR-style door bars
Passenger side X bar
A look inside
Another interior shot showing structure and horizontal X
Mmmm...pretty welds
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