Through dash cage??

[Steve83]

My floor is structural and that includes the rockers. I trimmed the rockers to 2" deep and used a 2X4 piece of heavy channel as the bottom of the rocker. This channel goes over the front body mounts as well. My frame can be isolated from the roll cage but the roll cage and body are really all one piece.

I tried to do that for a guy with a '94 Bronco, but he didn't understand it and wouldn't let me finish it. He wanted to see lots of tubes, even though his previous cage was pitiful & obtrusive.

But I agree that it's MUCH stronger for the bulk & weight to reinforce the body than to add a cage inside or out. IOW, integrate the cage into the existing body, like you did. It's like having a unibody vehicle (which is light, but strong enough for a rollover) on top of a full ladder frame. And being attached only by the stock body mounts, it's quiet and can safely separate from the chassis in a severe roll, the way speedboat cockpits pop out when the hulls disintegrate. Yours is the first one I've seen done that way.

 

[00gyrhed]

Thanks for the thumbs up but, I will tell a story on myself. It was orignal intention to Isolate the body from the frame to take advantage of what I thought would be a quiter more gentle ride that would result from having the roll cage and body as one and isolated from the frame.

I made myself some steel lift blocks from 2 inch pipe to fabricate everything fully intending to pull them out once everything was square and plumb. I bolted them down tight and went to work. The damn thing rode so well I just left them in.

Maybe one day, but as it sits I get no body roll on the pads.

Anyway here are four pic that pretty much show the structural floor. The sides and front are 2X4 channel the rear is two pieces of 2X2X3/16 angle welded into a Z shape. You can see where I burned the rear body mount into the spring hanger and frame. the ends of the angles go out to meet the rear of the rocker channels. all 4 corners of the front cage land on one of these heavy members. The floor is further reinforced with 1" SQ tubing you can see the outline of the spot welds in the 12 ga floor. A little too heavy but ALL of the material I used in the floor and roll cage was free, and if I am anything else I am at least cheap.