Last year after seeing a photo of a Caterham stuffed under some Armco on the internet and being horrified by just 4 x 8mm bolts through fiberglass holding my windscreen away from my face I started making some phone call about buying a cage

For one reason or another I could not buy one off the shelf, have a delivery date or I would have to trail the car halfway across the country then do the same trip a few weeks later to pick up the car again

With this in mind I started looking at retaining my RAC bar for its integrity and adding a forward loop of my own construction

DISCLAIMER

Don't do this if you don't know how to weld or doubt your ability. Treat it as information I no nothing about the subject and do your own research or just buy the off the shelf item and have it fitted

So I leant a pipe bender from a mate bought some seamless pipe and made a start reading the blue book for info and ideas

I first started by bending the pipes to shape

I made saddle type claps to fit over the box section with spacers to stop the saddle hitting the bodywork or the

box section collapsing

1

2

I trimmed the end of the tubing using rolled up toilet paper centres to sit on the saddle stubs

3

I cut trimmed and tacked the roof bars to the rear loop, the put a bit of wood across the tub to support the side impact bars at the right height to tack them on

4

I tacked in a diagonal to give strength and shield the mirror mounting plate from passengers

5

Cleaned old powder coating off with abrasive disc

6

Fresh back from powder coating

7

Fitted to car

Costs were

£160 for steel tubing

£40 for powder coating

£20 for cutting and grinding discs, mig wire and bolts