Plans for a rollcage?

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Whatever you do with your cage make sure you build it so you can get the body on and off. Most cages around the B-Pillar get wider then the heater channel and you can’t get the body off or on because of that. Speaking from experience myself.

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Your post is correct: this is one of the problems on how hard it is to build a cage for a glass buggy. In this case the bottom flange of the body is flanged to the inside of the pan (in this case with a body lift) where the bolts are but...

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...notice how the upper body flange is... towards the outside making it easier for the hoops to go pretty much straight up. With my black buggy both the upper FG body flanges as well as the lower body flange are facing inward so the cage has to sit on the pan and attached to the body lift also for strength then bend out some (and inch or so) to give as much inside body strength as possible; one of the reasons for the several different mockups I have played with. I will have to add a side bar to the outside of the body lift so I can support the front "wings"/fenders and the ersatz running boards (really the ends of the fenders) incase someone tries to get in using the running boards or for a side hit. Not much in this world is simple is there.

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I got this idea for the in-side side bar for the cage from one of the racing Bajas (CYB) who post here.

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CWB's pix I edited to look at how they dealt with the problem which is somewhat similar to the glass buggy problem. Again, this is not for just the street of off-road but also for racing so it is a bit stronger than I need or a street buggy might need.

Lee

Since I have been playing around with with this same problem on my black buggy again I think I need to re-work on the mount/base of the rear hoop again. The location and dealing with the spherical radius area on the floor of the pan (in the rear feet depression area) is one of the things I am currently playing with. Sometimes talking to someone else about something gets you thinking in a different direction and... sometimes not !

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

The plans for the cage came from one of the guys who use to post here. He was an inspector for one of the larger off-road races as I remember.

I posted them to give people some ideas for protection and pan strength. Even on the street protection is sorely needed now days.

Lee

[Ol'fogasaurus]

You may or may not have noticed that in the picture of the blue buggy the body was notched out where the foot of the cage contacted the body lift.

I had been warned several times that the FG, as a spacer, was not a good idea and for several reasons one being that it is fairly brittle and could crush/fail under a heavy load or shock. Not sure if this is true and I have tried looking it up with no good results positive or negative!

If the FG does fail then the bolts tightly clamping the cage to the pan (in my case my blue buggy, the body lift and pan) so the cage could move around in an accident or rollover.

Does anyone know for sure or where documentation would be? I am at this point in my black buggy and I want to be sure before any more cutting up of the body is needed.

Lee

Doing some more searching I did find an article (copied in several discussions) about FG but it seemed like it was dealing with FG rods (a tech paper) dealing with crash loading of say helicopter bodies and it also dealt with several different types of FG with the "E" style being mentioned which I think is what a lot of FG bodies us now days.

Basically, if I understand what was written correctly (I didn't understand the loading graphs), the weave and material of the mat and thickness of the end product does make energy absorption better.

Lee