Santa was nice enough to let me buy myself the 14" Stoptechs and Kirk Racing roll cage for time trials next year. The brake kit is flawless as many others have said before. After having to deal with the Perf/Touring brakes through 6 track events this year the difference is amazing! After break-in the car stops on a dime. I also installed the Kirk Racing roll cage. It is very well constructed. The only quasi-problem (other than drilling holes in your brand new car) was the mounting plate on the passenger side floor. The floor is raised sligtly where the mounting plate goes, so you have to drill through it and compress the frame flat between the mounting plate of the bars and the supporting backing plate underneath the car. I also sprayed all the plates down with a cold galv, galvanizing paint to seal against rust. The seats fit fine, obviously the passenger seat is forward 6". I can include other pics if interested...

 

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That's a roll bar and not a cage, right? A cage would go all the way to the front of the compartment I believe.

 

Yes, it's a 4pt. roll bar. I had the opportunity to check out mattg's roll bar (he had the first one), and I was quite impressed with the quality of the welds and the overall design. mcclackz, did you do the install yourself? Also, it looks like you raised the harness bar a bit, did you?

 

I guess you can't open your glove box behind the passenger seat anymore? Looks good though.

 

Sweet!!!

 

All you need now is some race rubber and you're set. What pads you going to run?

 

i did install it myself. i recommend drinking at least one beer before drilling holes in your own car. it is a roll bar not cage. I have had great success with carbotech xp9s. all others in their catalogue burn up to easy. The xp9s are the only pad that i have had some material left after 2 days(6-8 sessions, roughly 4-6 hours). john- the bar is as it came from kirk, no changes.

 

I normally do most installations myself, but when it comes to drilling holes in the car, I get nervous. Also, where the bar mounts to the floor, do you think the car has adequate support there to brace the roll bar in case of a rollover? I know for a fact that our floorboard is soft, so that's why I wasn't sure if it mounted to the floorboard or to the chassis there. Interesting to see your harness bar there, Matt's was a tad lower...

 

Coming from Lotus Land..........I've been appalled at some "Roll Bar" installs. People actually bolted bars to fiberglass panels AND expected the bars to work........

Please consider adding a cross brace between mounting points WELDED to the chassis under the car.

Sorry to be negative, but a Roll Bar NEEDS to PROTECT the driver.


Even a 20 piece cage bolted to a piece of tin foil is SCARY!




Yes, I wear nomex!

 

....and nice brakes!

 

why did you opt for plain rotors? just curious....

 

They are slotted, the slots are covered by the 6 spokes on the TE's.

 

Car looks very good. Hope you never need the cage.

 

Yeah, I got a little scared drifting ~105 at the kink at CMP with sand at track out. I noticed my harness bar was 8" lower than my head... I still need to raise the bar an inch and will eventually weld some other plates underneath. I put my sparco harness back in and everything fit very well.

 

OK, well good to know. I remember hearing raceboy mention that he was going to weld in plates, so perhaps I'll just pay somebody to do that when I install it.

mcclaskz and jmark, have you all signed up for any track events for 04 yet?

 

Yeah, i'm going to vir in Feb twice, another time in March, and in April. There should be some summer dates for vir, cmp, and roebling. Hopefully trackschedule.com will have the 04 dates up soon.

 

I'll probably attend the GA Cup races at VIR & Barber Motorsports Park. Haven't tracked the car yet.

 

Guys, this might be a stupid question since I haven't seen exactly how this cage mounts, but couldn't you put a piece of 1/4" steel plate or something similar under the floor and either bolt directly into that or even better put some clearance holes in that and use some nuts to clamp the whole thing together? That would sandwich a large section of the floor which would be quite strong even if it was fairly thin. Is that kind of thing OK or is the welding necessary?

-D'oh!