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Paul Buck
that 5k starting price is, uh, a lot. seemed like an article made to push people in the direction of big money capitalism, spendspendspend.
i got these major points from that link:....
Well, that's the shop I work for. I've now done about a dozen cages. I've been party to two Custom Cage builds. I've even bult a few tube-frame cars and rebuilt a monocoque car.
If you are going to do it yourself, the Custom Cage route is accptable.
If you are going to drag a kit to a shop for install, unless the FIA certified kit lets you get away with a cage that wouldn't otherwise be allowed, it's not worth it.
My first cage was rough. The fit wasn't great. It cramped the occupants in a car that was already cramped before it was caged. It didn't provide any wheelwell intrusion protection. But it was relatively safe and tightened up a soft tub. The second cage survived a huge roll in Mexico without any deformation. The WRC inspectors poured over it and declared that if we could put the car back together we could continue (a bent cage would mean forced retirement). Learned from the first cage how to leave more room for the driver and not add a thousand bars. The subsequent cages have all been better and better. Better fitup, less weight, tailored to their rule set, or optimized to work in multiple rule sets so the owner has options on where to run it, or where to sell it when they are done.
FWIW, I wouldn't use those double bend door bars in a rally car that is more likely to see point loading. I'd use a parallel "X" that stuck out into the door. But that white Mustang was built to a rule set where the inspectors like that style and request it. For bumper-to-door impacts commonly seen in wheel to wheel racing, it works well. There are other cages on our site that have odd requirements, like the land speed racing cage, or the drag car cages that most rally people would find horrifying compared to their rally cages.
And yes, our typical cage job is a $4500-$5000 bill. We've got fabricators that do good work and want to make a decent wage. We have overhead costs. When you ask us for a cage, because you trust our judgement and value our work, we chage enough to cover cover our costs, make -some- profit, and stay in business. Enough people like our work, that for large jobs we are booked for months ahead.
If you can do it yourself, I think you should. But tooling up to do a cage properly can be a little expensive. Getting a few things wrong with it may only be an inconvience (like banging your elbow every time you turn left) and it's unlikely that you will build a truely unsafe cage with the resources available on this forum. That said, there are some things to be gained by going to a shop with a good reputation and being able to examine their work before you shell out for a premium product. Have them explain why they do some of the bar routing. Do you not like plinths? Then they can pop off the roof to weld the top of the cage. Want some features they don't do? Ask them about it. There may be a reason they don't do it that way.
Jason McDaniel
