All we have to fear is...Every car on the road.

I thought long and hard about the safety aspects of my, decidedly unsafe, car. I'm a good driver and have never been in an accident that was my fault. That hasn't stopped other idiots from hitting me though. I definitely was going to put a roll cage in my car. The purpose of said cage would be to protect passengers in the unlikely event of an accident not to save me in case I roll my car I. Somehow a 1/4 inch piece of fiberglass between me and little miss soccer mom in her 7000 lb Chevy Tahoe didn't seem like enough protection. My original plan was to build a full custom cage for my car. Two things stopped me. One was the amount of work and money involved with building such a cage and the other was the issue of looks. I like the single hoop look. I think it's clean and neat. The KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) look is what I'm going for here. I want the car to look like what it is. Minimalist.

I thought about my cage and looked into several different options. The simplest idea was to just buy one from the Manx club and bolt it up. While the price was fair, I would've been eaten alive on shipping. I also had the Idea to modify a jeep cage or a truck light bar to get the job done. But they were all the wrong size. In the end, I decided to build my own. I came up with a design that would run along the lip of my floors and bolt through the angled steel that I used as side channels. The main hoop only required two bends and I learned a technique to do that here. I ordered some 1 1/2 inch .095 DOM tube in three different lengths. One twelve Ft. for the main hoop, two four Ft. for the sides, and a three Ft. piece to run from the main hoop to the tunnel. I also bought an eight Ft. piece of 2" x 1/4" steel to use along the bottom. I think the grand total was about $125 for all the steel and twenty bucks for the muffler shop to bend it.

The hardest part about building the cage was the notching of the pipes. I had to do it by hand with my trusty (now on my second because I wore out the original) die grinder with three inch cutting wheel. It took forever but I'm amazed at the results. I think this is a fantastic set up for my buggy. The side tubes give me piece of mind in the event of a side impact and the two short pieces bolted to the main tunnel will make sure it doesn't just crumple. Hopefully, if I do take a low speed impact from an SUV, it will displace my whole car instead of coming through my 1/4" of fiberglass a squashing me. I'm not disillusioned about a high speed impact. I know that will be bad no matter how much steel I put in the thing. A 1500lb dune buggy vs. 7000lb SUV is just a simple matter of Newton's law.

When mocked up on the car, the main hoop is pretty much all that's visible so it looks nice and old school.

One interesting thing I learned building this is that a welder can actually give you a sun burn.