- Joined
- Aug 22, 2005
- Messages
- 14,497
I have been asked by a few members for pictures of a roll cage I built. The cage it self is kind of the regular family style cage. With floor and seat bars added plus all the seat belt mounts. What is different is the thru the dash with nothing on the floor at the A pillar. Plus it is tied to the frame at the A pillar. Will it survive a roll over? No idea, because I'm not testing it, but I think it would hold up. It's .120 wall DOM 1 3/4'' tubing with some 1.625 lesser floor bars. It is tied to the frame at the A, B, and C, pillar. The owner of the truck wanted his kids to be a littler safer and he had long legs and did not want the bars at his feet in the front. Now there were a few design problems with this. First off I wanted to go thru the dash. But a bronco dash will not let you put a 1 3/4'' tube thru it without it showing thru the face of the dash. So I had to built a new dash that was 1 7/8'' wide at the top to let the bars pass thru it. witch in turn required that I build a new dash pad because a stock one would not fit. The owner is a chef and I went with a brushed stainless material on the dash. The original idea was to get some range top knobs and use them for the dash. But that never happened. Anyway The idea here was to find a way to get the a pillar to the frame, without it being in the way of the owners feet. I knew right away that the cage would have to be separated / bolted together, just above the dash, because the angle of the bars would change the dimensions as it was lowered thru the dash. So its 2 piece just above the dash. I sandwiched 2 pieces of 1/8'' plate on the inside and outside of both kick panels. Then I bent up some bars the went thru the dash and landed against the sandwiched plate utilizing a long scarf joint on the tube against the steel plate. I tack welded the tube to the plate. On the outside of the sandwiched plate, I welded 2 -1 1/2'' pieces of flat stock that ran vertically down the length of the plate. At the bottom of the flat stock I drilled a 3/4'' hole. I bolted a rod end to this and passed the end thru the stock hole in the low part of the inner fender. Next I made a mount on the frame that had 2 connecting points on it. I tried to spread the distance of these mounting points as far apart as I could. I then made an arm the had 3 threaded I put threaded rod ends into. I fir it all and welded it up. I also welded on tabs to allow me to bolt the bottom of the dash to the tubing. Just above the bottom of the dash I was able to install a horizontal tube that tied to the two kick panel tubes. So there is some horizontal support behind the dash. I did not take a bunch of detailed pictures of this but I think you can get the idea of what I was trying to do. To date the owner has not tested the cage.
