Rollbar Considerations
Aside from the aforementioned safety considerations, Rollbars are great!
There is a lot involved with them however. First, you should know the types. The most 'basic' rollbar is a 2-point hoop, which is mostly just a looks thing. The rollbar installed in this VFAQ is a 4-point rollbar. That typically means that it attaches to the floorpan behind the seats, and has two support arms that extend to/near the rear strut towers.
There are two-types of six-point cages - the 'drag-race' style, and the full-cage style. For pictures of all these rollbar/cage types, click here.
Various sanctioning bodies have many different rules for rollbars. Autopower products are for SCCA, IMSA, and similar kinds of racing. NHRA/IDRC specs are slightly different, and Autopower cages apparently do not meet these requirements. Likewise, Cages meeting NHRA/IDRC guidelines typically do not suffice for the SCCA. Check with your sanctioning body.
Lastly, there are several types of metal used. Chrome-Moly steel is stronger, so thinner walls can be used and the resulting cage is lighter. As well, various ways of making the tubing - ERW or DOM can make things a bit lighter. See I/O Port's FAQ for more information. The cage I got was an ERW 4-point, and the shipping manifest listed its weight at 50lbs.
Lastly, there is the choice of getting a bolt-in cage versus having one custom made. I have talked to many folks about cage options, and without fail, from amateur to professional racers, and they have nothing but raves about Autopower products.
After having installed mine, I'd have to agree. Fitment, and fit-and-finish of this product were very, very good. I even got lucky and had mine within 2 weeks, as opposed to the 3-6 wait I/O port normally quotes! As another aside, I/O Port's customer service is also very good, and kept me exactly updated of what was going on with the order.
Installation
Installation is surprisingly easy, believe it or not.
First, you'll almost have to have a friend to help you with this install. As well, make sure to park the car in a spot where you can get both doors fully open, and have plenty of room.
Make sure to have the non-metric wrenches and sockets listed above, since the Autopower hardware is SAE.
OK, now we can get started. The first step is to remove your seats. There are four 14mm's that hold the seat to the body. As well, two more 12mm bolts hold the seatbelt bracket onto the seat. Take care on the driver's side, as there is a connector sticking out of the carpet that you must unclip. There is also a gray plastic beam that somehow seems to connect to the seat. Nobody has any idea what this does. Remove it if you like - it's a 17mm bolt.
Now remove the back seat lower cushion. There are two clips that hold it at the front, and I think two at the rear - mine has been out so long I don't remember how to remove it. Remember, you can't have rear passengers anymore!
Your interior should now look somewhat like fig 1. If you are removing your factory choker-belts, now would be a good time to do so, since the pillars of the rollbar will interfere with removing the lower panel.
Go ahead and maneuver the rollbar into the car. It is much easier to do this from the passenger side. If you ordered the removable cross brace and harness bar, pull these off, since it will make the bar easier, and lighter, to move around. Be careful when moving the bar around the inside of your car. It is a tight fit, and we managed to absolutely mangle my a-pillar plastic trim in the process of moving the bar around. (Fortunately I had backups from cars I'd parted out)
Lean the bar up against the steering wheel, and prepare the surfaces you'll be bolting it to. The bar's rear supports go through the rear speaker holes, (fig 4)so you will need to ditch your rear speakers, and all the misc support bracketry back there. Chip off as much of the sound-deadening as you can. I chose to just cut out the entire speaker hole to make the installation and re-checking of the bolts easier.
Now, install the rear braces on the rollbar. This is a pain because of the tight space in the car. You just have to worry them on a little bit at a time. Start on one side, get the other side started, and go back and forth until they slide on. Bolt the pieces to the main hoop. (fig. 2, fig. 3)
Position the rollbar in the car. Push it as far back as you can on the floorpan. At this point, we went ahead and cut the carpet around the edge of the feet of the hoop, and cut back the sound deadening underneath the carpet. If you want to hide the feet a bit better, a crosshatch pattern might let you get more of the feet under the carpet.
Note that there is a wiring harness running along the back wall of the floorpan (on both sides). Take a flathead screwdriver to push it back and up as far as possible. On my car, we removed the cardboard backing on the back wall to give a bit more room for the wiring.
Go ahead and bolt in your harness bar and crossbrace if you have them (fig. 5), or removed them, taking note of the 'note' below.
At this point, you should be ready to drill your holes. After making sure the bar is still as far back as possible, and everything looks right, fit the 3/8" bit to your drill and drill the holes for the feet one at a time. As you drill, put the bolts through the holes to keep the bar from walking around on you - which it will want to do. (fig.8) It helped to have one of us pulling backwards on the bar while the other drilled to keep the bar in perfect position.
SPECIAL NOTE: - There is some oddity with the crossbrace and the passenger side foot mount. I ordered the removable crossbrace option for my bar. With the crossbrace in place, it was impossible to fit the drillbit to where the hole for the foot was supposed to be. So, we removed the crossbrace to do so. I'm not sure if that makes the crossbrace an obligate option or not. As well, once the holes were drilled, it was very difficult to get the bolt through the bracket for mounting the crossbrace down there. See Figs 6 and 7.
Now that you've drilled all six holes for the feet, go ahead and put the backing plates on the bottom to bolt the bar in place. (fig 9, fig 10).
Now, drill the holes for the rear braces. Do the inner two from inside the car as, putting bolts through the holes as you drill them. The third (outer) you have to drill from the wheel well with the car jacked up, since there won't be room to fit your drill. Fit the backing plate over the two bolts in place and drill through. You should it the gap on the Autopower bar's footpad without any trouble at all.
Once all the holes are drilled for the rear braces, you will want to remove the bolts one at a time and feed them back through from the wheel-well side, since this will give more clearance between the tire and the bolts. Don't forget your backing plates. (fig. 11)
Now that all the bolts are in place with nuts on them, go ahead and torque them down. you will feel the floorpan flex a bit as you tigthen down the bottom bolts. After all 12 are torqued, spin a second nut on to lock everything in place, and torque those down a bit too.
Don't forget to double-check the torque on your cross-brace, harness brace, and the rear support bolts.
Go ahead and reinstall your seats, or if you want, at this point you can start with installing all the harness stuff.
And that is the gist of it. From start to finish, even with doing the pictures and harness stuff, my friend and I did this in about 3 hours. See the final page of this VFAQ for impressions etc. The final product(figs. 12-15) looks pretty sharp!
Any questions/comments/flames/love letters to:
mrjones@holly.colostate.edu
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fig 1
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fig 15
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