For everyone building a car to race in the near term, please do yourself, parents, friends and other loved ones a tremendous favor and take your car to a reputable cage builder and have a full (to the max allowance of the rules) cage welded into your car. $hit happens on track and its not always within your power to keep yourself on the black top - rolls, smacks, endo's, etc do occur and after seeing another doozy, I just wanted to restate my belief that the first thing a race car needs is the most well thought out, best constructed cage you can build to the rules (it has nothing to do with money, put it all there first IMO).

Thanks for your time and be safe.

 

 

 

Allright Phat, I wasn't there Sunday, just Saturday - obviously something happened at Roebling. What was it?!?

 

Yes, Do tell!

 

It's long overdue for me. I'm praying I get through '03 okay. After this year, I'm done for awhile.

 

...and the second purchase should be a really good seat, rather than the crap that some people buy.

Kirk (who can't resist a rant)

 

Everyone is ok, I didn't mean it to seem otherwise. I don't think I was even going to say something but came home after seeing 3 tub-detrimental events this weekend and saw "suspension first" or something like that and thought to myself ... nah, badass cage first. Sorry for the "rant"

At the Roebling Double School this weekend, the following occurred:

A driver was third in line coming down the front straight, pulled out to pass a slower car (call it B) in front and the guy he was following. The B car apparently stepped out to pass the guy in front of him, caught the C car (a very well prepped professionally built SPU car driven by a rental driver) in his mirror and pulled over some more (if I understood correctly). The C car pulled over further right and swerved into the berm in front of T1 CW stand. He hit a full tilt (was told he was travelling around 120 mph) and went end over end three times at a height of 15' (all second hand information obviously). The driver was ok but upset (he was not there when I spoke to the car owner). The cage was completely untouched. It was the only unmollested part of the car (from my vantage point), the front was shortenend and the rear end stopped at the roll cage - absolutely amazing the guy wasn't seriously hurt or killed.

On Saturday, an ITC car rolled (supposedly it wasn’t even that violent) and the cage, which was a welded cage, deflected noticably in two places, the psgr corner where the front hoop met the A pillar bar and the knee bar where it met the psgr A pillar bar. As was described by a cage builder there, the knee bar folded from an improper bend or bender (didn't ask enough questions on this, sorry). Luckily the driver was ok. Very lucky the knee bar collapse occurred on the passenger side not the driver side.

A Spec Miata rolled and I saw this one. It went 4 off of T4 at an angle and was not going slowly. The car caught the sand and kicked up in the air (high enough for me to see it from T3 at several feet in the air. The car rolled and landed on its wheels. The cage construction was good enough that a windshield replacement and 2 hours of hammering had the car back on the track.

To give you a visual of the first incident, imagine a Civic with a custom welded cage. Where the back legs come down to the shock towers represents the new rear end of the car. The right rear wheel is now pretty much perpendicular to the line of travel. The front end is significantly shorter than it started the day. The tub was absolutely unrecognizable. Even the guy that took it off the flatbed had absolutely no idea what kind of car it was (I think he asked if it was a Fiat). Honestly, I tried to describe it to someone this evening and the only way I can is to imagine a pickup truck minus the bed and most of the front end. Again, thank G-d the driver was not seriously hurt or worse and thank G-d that the builder put as much energy into the cage as he did the motor and suspension - it saved the driver's life (and he got a lot of kudos from the stewards for his cage work after seeing this). I know that it made me think twice about my cage and later feel very, very glad I have what I have. Please consider if you don’t have sufficient roll over protection that you will not always be able to control the events around you. Combine the first story’s events with the cage construction in #2 and I would not want to imagine the outcome.

This is only out of concern and just passing on information, its not meant any other way and I certainly do not intend to blame drivers and such, especially guys I do not know. I will just go by the assumption that these situations were all such that any of us could have found ourselves in the same place (and hopefully we'd all fare as well) - just wanted to convey again how important this piece of racing equipment is. Again, major props to the cage builder in the first example, it wasn't a real funky complex design but it was strong as hell obviously and I gotta believe it saved someone's life.

Adam

P.S. - yeah, I totally agree with you Kirk. I should say "all safety equipment FIRST." I am sure seat mounting and harness mounting played a huge role in significantly limiting injury.


P.P.S. - if it is in poor taste to mention this, I apologize - I feel that it is something often glossed over in light of the rush to get a car ready. I used this for my soapbox. At the end of the day, everyone seemed to have been not too much the worse for wear and that is the most important thing.

P.P.P.S. - it should go without saying that I am not a metalurgist nor an engineer and all of my perceptions and information was gathered through my inexperienced eyeballs and from conversations with others. If I have misrepresented any facts or details, I welcome corrections.


[Modified by phat-S, 9:43 AM 2/10/2003]

 

Kirk, what are examples of really good seats, and really bad ones?

 

egad. It wasn't the white SPU Civic, former SWC-T car, was it??

Saw the same car. Agree, that was some scary deformation on that pass side a-pillar. I'll bet it was a crush bend that gave in and folded (even though they are not legal, I see IT cars all the time with most bends smooth mandrel type and here and there a crush bend, like they tweaked it with a pipe bender instead of taking the extra time to do it right).

I'll second all the points of your rant, Phat. That $10,000 H1 megamotor may just help you put yourself in a wheelchair or worse if you skimp on the cage because you didn't have enough cash left over.


[Modified by 1gTeg90, 3:03 PM 2/10/2003]

 

I don't want to harp on the short comings that are inherent with bolt-ins, but I do want to say a quick word about a good cage.

The differences between a cage that complies with the rules and a *really* good cage can often be difficult to see to the untrained eye (me). Ask your builder what they are going to do with your cage. i.e. why they put a bar where they did and what that bar will PREVENT from happening in an accident. If they can't answer your question(s), get curious.

Also, putting in a proper seat mount should be considered a mandatory option when you take you car to that reputable builder. I bolted my high-dollar seat to the stock location with an unbelievably heavy home-brew angle iron mount. In a relatively minor incident this year, the stock seat bolts started to pull out of the "reinforced" sheet metal they were attached to and the 1/4" angle iron bent substantially. A carbon-kevlar seat is no good if it doesn't stay in place.

Even the best safety equipment is only as good as it's weakest point. Eliminate the weak points and you'll be ok.

 

I'm not Kirk but who gives a ****:

Really GOOD seats:
- FIA '99-spec or better (I believe it is 99)

Pretty GOOD seats:
- Kirkeys
- FIA '92-spec with a seatback brace

Note that the FIA 99 (or whatever spec it is) does not require the use of a seatback brace since the seat is designed to flex in certain ways to absorb impact and prevent injury. Use of a brace on these seats will render their additional safety characteristics useless. As a result the SCCA and NASA have acknowledged this and no longer require the brace for FIA-99 (or whaever it is) seats.

Really BAD seats:
- Non-FIA-approved
- Any that recline (the hinge becomes a weak link)
- Arospeeds
- Any seat that advertises "comfort" and "looks" as its key selling points

 

I'll jump on here as my opportunity to re-enforce some things I've said here to people who have said things like "I've never built a cage before, but I can weld." and "My buddy built a drag rollbar once." Yeah... OK... Whatever.

To the untrained eye a cage looks like a bunch of pipes welded or bolted into a car. "Anybody that can weld can do it." Dead wrong (pun intended).

The ITC Escort was one of those "budget" cars best I could tell. The cage was not properly bended (bent?) and it took Mark Stewart (Kirk) about 3 seconds to spot the cause of the collapse. Fortunately for the driver the collapse was on the passenger side. Had it been on the other side it might have been unpretty. Also keep in mind that this is only a 2000ish pound car. Think about that for a minute.

The SPU car on the other hand had a cage from hell in it. That car was effectively a balled up hunk of metal around a cage. THATS exactly what a cage should do.

There is no doubt in my mind that had the ITC car with the collapsed cage had the same sort of wreck the SPU car had, the driver would have been tragically maimed at best. That's a sobering thought.

Scott, who's new ITC car has a nice Puckett Cage in it .

 

Corey wouldn't let me weld a baffle in his oil pan much less a cage for the car

 

This sounds like an accident I saw at Summit Point a couple years ago. In the start of the Spec RX-7 race, somebody touched somebody who touched somebody, which launched Jim Epping's (sp?) car -- it finally came to rest OVER that wire fence on the right-hand side of the front straight, about 100+ feet down from where sound control normally is. I can't remember how many times it flipped. Maybe once or twice. It was like an accident that SportsCenter would show (because they can't actually show real racing). The rescue crew eventually got him out of the car and helped him walk to the ambulance. Maybe Al/CrackMonkey can tell what happened to him, but I don't recall that it was serious at all. The guy still races, and I think he was racing later on that year.

The car was brought back to the pits and sat near the tech shed -- while every body panel was mangled or crushed, the cage was in near perfect shape.

 

The roll cage is one investment you hope you will never use. But when the time comes, having the most cage you can afford is always money well spent.

SPiFF, who for a second thought about adding a bolt-in front to his bolt-in Kirk Bar for ECHC, but quickly dismissed the idea. How he has a custom welded cage with NASCAR bars, even though it meant that he wasn't able to run at all last year.

 

Thats because coors lite cans do not meet the minimum material thickness.......

 

Safety first, always. Excellent timing of this post Adam, being the very beginning of the season.

1st purchase for my SE-R back in '99 was an Autopower cage and 5 point harnesses. Not tires. Not suspension. Not a header. Cage

Never had to use it, hope I never will.

Matt-never driven a car on track without rollover protection.

 

On the seat question, even among the FIA-homogated crowd, there are good 'uns and not-so-good 'uns. I would stay far away from anything with a tubular frame** and then apply my abuse test. We used RECAROs in the rally car and they were stout as hell. I haven't messed with a contemporary Sparco but they were all over the quality map - price-dependent - the last time I used one.

K

** I did not know that any of the current FIA-spec seats were tube framed but have been told that this is the case.

 

here's a question since quality cages has been a hot topic lately.....for those of us who need/want a better cage, how much have your cages cost you and who did you have do it....and how long did they take

thanks!

ps. i will say i have seen some crazy hits/rollover in SRx7 where guys turn the car back over and raced the next day w/ auto power bolt in cages......but srx7 speeds are not excessive to begin with

 

Steve,

You'll be looking at something in the neighborhood of $2000 for a good custom cage, and a week or so to install it.

Matt

 

SRX7 cages are autopower bolt-ins. IMO, they sit way too close to the driver's feet and head........ i did not feel comfortable in one driving it around on the street for sure.

 

Better add about $1k to that for the West Coast.

 

Somehow Jim ended up taking the inside line on the start, you know, where the pavement turns into rutted dirt after pit-out. He hit the dirt, and then a pothole. Car went airborne. I think the number of rollovers was closer to 5 than 2, but it's hard to tell. He didn't quite walk away - he had a few broken ribs and possibly a punctured lung (I don't recall the details, but he was hospitalized for a few days I think). He was racing later that season and continued another two seasons after that. He retired from racing in 2002 - he was in his late 60s (or early 70s) and could drive faster than his reflexes could handle. Last I heard, he's touring the US by RV with his wife.

I've seen one other bad SRX-7 wreck. It was Bert Mill's car at a NASA event (unfortunately, I had second row seats, as I was the other car in the incident). He went over the berm outside the chute and landed somewhere near the access road to Jefferson. He walked away and even brought his ITA car out on Sunday.

Both of these cars were using Autopower cages. BUT (AND THAT'S A CAPITAL BUT) - both cages were welded to the chassis with larger-than-provided base plates. Both cars were totalled, Bert's roof caved a little, but the cage held up for the most part. Jim's cage held up pretty well, again with minimal buckling. I *think* the buckling in both cases was a result of landing right on the corner of the front hoop/halo area.

 

Nothing wrong with a little deflection, that actually helps. Broken welds and folded tubes....bad!