speedengineer

I'm currently in the process of caging my S2000 and figured I would share my progress. When I was doing research for ideas, I was only able to find a handful of well documented cage builds out there, so here is one more, hopefully the info is useful to people.

I did a write-up on my website with a bunch of photos, and don't feel like reposting it all here, so...follow the link below. I'll keep updating the page as the build progresses.

http://www.adrenalineautosport.com/d...d/fabrication/

TTMartin

I recall discussion if there was a need for a cross beam in the dash.

robrob

Nice work. The design is very similar to my Piper Motorsports cage:



I do recommend a dash cross beam because you can't really tie the cage into the stock cross beam. You can see both, the large stock beam and the cage cross beam in the pic above.

dan_uk

looks good m8 that car is going to be seriously fast when u are finished

speedengineer

Yes, I'll probably be putting in a cross beam since it will do a lot to strengthen the side impact protection. I sure wish the NASA rules allowed me to attach to more than just the 6 basic attachment points, but oh well.

Rob, how do you like the height of the top side bar on your cage? I'm trying to decide how high to put mine, and yours is one of the higher up ones that I've seen - is it difficult to get in/out of the car? Certainly higher up is better for side impact protection (closer to the bumper height of a lot of larger vehicles) but I don't want the car to be a pain to get or out of either.

speedengineer

Thanks Dan. One can hope, but I'm not sure if I'll really see much of a lap time improvement from the cage. Yes, it will be stiffer, yes I'll have a lot of freedom to put ballast wherever I want, I'm just not sure those two things will make lap times much faster. Might make the car easier and more predictable to drive though.

Anybody have any comments/experience/opinions on how a cage installation affected their car's performance, all else being equal?

krazik

Unfortunately his cage is not like yours. notice how the diagonals all meet at 1 place on yours. I understand they're probably trying to make more room for his seat, but the pics the op posted the diagonal in the main hoop won't likely meet up with the diagonal running back (unless they're doing an odd design for them too).

I applaud the op getting a cage for your race/tt car, but I wish the people who built them spent more time actually making triangles.

robrob

Quote:

Rob, how do you like the height of the top side bar on your cage? I'm trying to decide how high to put mine, and yours is one of the higher up ones that I've seen - is it difficult to get in/out of the car?

It's pretty easy to get into and out of but a halo seat would make it much more difficult.



I didn't notice much of a difference in how the car handled after the cage was put in, but when you jack the car from the side you see how stiff it is. The added chassis stiffness adds more potential for precise chassis tuning and ultimately more speed. In the year after I installed the cage I took 2.5 seconds off my lap time at Summit Point Main.

speedengineer

Well, on the driver's side of my cage, the main hoop doesn't follow the contour of the interior of the hardtop as it does in Rob's, so which makes the distance between the corner and where the cross brace attaches to it farther. Also, my main hoop attaches closer to the floor pan of the car, rather than to the 'self'. The location where the cross brace attaches (as you mentioned) makes room for the seat to slide back farther, as well as provides additional clearance for the driver's helmet.

The purpose of the cross brace is to prevent the main hoop from 'parallelagramming' in the event of a rollover. There is actually no need for the brace to extend fully to the corner of the main hoop. My rear braces will attach to the main hoop at a point opposite of the forward hoops, which is optimal.

speedengineer

Thanks for the input! Yeah, last year when I drove slowly around the paddock and I drove over uneven ground (cross weigh change) I could visually see the windshield frame move and creak against the hardtop, so the uncaged chassis is definitely pretty flexible!