I'm installing a cage this year and want to hear feedbak from buyers of pre fabbed cages from the aftermarket. I don't know for sure if I am going with the 8 or 10 pt. yet but its a minor differance in these terms. I have looked on the net and it seems to me the best fit and snuggest is from Chassis engineering, but I am curious to thoughts on from owners and people with cages from others. I will order the notched option and prob get the swing out driver's dr only and want the rear trunk bars to connect to the rear axle pan, just before the compartment stowage. I have checked out the Wolfcraft but only suggests 4th gen cars, could they work with 3rd gens without much difficulty???

 

i have yet to honestly see a nice fitting pre-fab unit that didn't require some reworking....

 

I welded an S&W Race Cars cage into my 1989 Formula. My experience told me that "pre-notched" would have done me little good, since I had to cut almost every tube on both ends to get it to fit. Even then, the fit was not great on the front bars (up the "A" pillars, at the front of the doors), I was not happy with the fit of that cage and would have new bars bent if I were doing it again. When you say "pre-fab", I originally thought "autopower" brand or type (the bolt in kits), then when you said "Chassis Engineering", I am guessing you meant a weld in, pre-bent, kit? Both have advantages. The bolt in are easy to install and fit "pretty well". The weld in are much more work to install, but usually stronger and sometimes don't fit much better than the others (depending on the kit).

My thoughts.

Good luck!

 

There are no true direct fit cages available because there is no specific placement for the bars. It all depends on the exact configuration of you car.

Every bar needs to be cut to length depending on where you decide to place them.

The kits include a main prebent hoop. The halo bar is prebent and notched. The A-piller bars are prebent and notched on one end. The door bars, rear bars, rear cross brace are only notched on one end. All other bars supplied with the kits are straight un-notched bars.

Typical 8 point cage is a main hoop, halo bar, A-piller bars, door bars and rear bars. A 10 point includes main hoop support bars that go down to the tranny tunnel. A 12 point includes X-bar for door bar, knee bar and forward supports from the A-piller bars that go through the firewall.

I bought the 12 point kit from Jegs and installed everything except the forward bars. It's really hard finding a way to get them through the multiple layers of the firewall. I upgraded my kit by buying some tubing locally and installing a sill bar between the main hoop and the A-piller bar.

My Jegs kit is nice but not perfect. I don't like the way the A-piller bar is bent and I chopped up my dash pad to mount it as forward as possible (not a big deal in a race car). The halo bar is nice. I can still remove my T-tops without the bar interfering with the handle.

To my knowledge none of the kits include gussets. They all should include the 6x6 plates that are either welded or bolted to the floor (welding is prefered). I bought a bunch of gussets locally and gusseted as much as I could. I also bought some 1" tubing for more corner gussets. Gusseted corners add more strength than just 2 pieces of tubing welded together.

To notch the tubing once I determined where I wanted the pieces to go I just used a 4" grinder. It's not perfect but does just a good a job as a tubing notcher. It just takes a little longer to get them to fit.

The cost of a cage kit is cheap although most of the pieces are just straight tubing. The cost of installation is where it gets pricey. Depending on how much interior needs to be removed, to have someone install a cage you can estimate $100-$150 per point.

 

Thanks alot, from what I gather then, if I order a pre bent/pre formed kit from whomever, then the notched bar option is not worth the money since I could notch it myself. I will weld it in and remove most of the interior and go from there and will prob get the 10pt kit since the car is a T-top, and folds and flexes much easier.
Thanks guys

 

All the kits are going to have some notched bars. They just won't have all the ends notched because it all depends on where you mount the bars as to their lengths. If you have a local chassis builder, you just need to get prebent main hoop, halo bar and A-piller bars. All the rest of the bars being straight can be purchased locally.

For example the door bar. It attaches to the main hoop then down to the A-piller bar. If it came notched at each end then you have to install the main hoop and A-piller bars in a precise location for the door bar to fit. They only notch one end of the bar and leave the bar 6-8" longer than needed. This allows you to cut and notch the bars to best fit where you're bars have been welded into.

If all the suppiled bars were perfectly cut and notched, it would be one big jigsaw puzzle that would have to be installed all at once to make sure everything lined up.

The nice thing about the kits is that they provide the proper thickness of tubing. A full cage is 1 5/8" tubing but not all of it. The main hoop, halo bar, A-piller bars, rear bars and main door bar are all 1 5/8". The X bar for the door, the knee bar, the main hoop supports to the tranny tunnel, cross brace and forward bars if it's a 12 point cage are all 1 1/2". That's all the specs require. If you wanted to improve on the cage and make it more like a funny car cage, you'd need more 1 5/8" bars around the driver.