RAC roll bar

[jasonp]

I have been thinking about fitting an RAC rollbar, but I want to keep the bootbox.

Does anyone have experience of cutting the large cutouts required for the stays and how is it best done to get a neat job, ie cardboard cutout template, or what?

[Phil P]

Just done this on my 88sei narrow. The main tool i used was a dremel, mainly the sanding drum and routing attachents - I highly recommend getting one if you don't have one already.

Firstly, I recommend you get bar with the bolt in rear braces as its much easier to fit than the all welded version. Also you will need the spacer kit from westfield for the top and bottom brackets on the rear braces as well

Remove the bootbox & bolt in the main upright section of the bar.

My car needed a bit trimmed our of the inner top lip of the rear bodywork section which usually sits under the lip of the boot box. To see where the clearance holes needed to go i offered up a 1 inch by 1/4inch  (ish) strip of wood the same length as the rearward brace into the position the brace will sit, ie in passing through both top and bottom brackets. When this was in place, I marked off the section to cut and gradually enlarged it with the dremel so that the brace could be fitted on both sides without the bootbox in place.

Now the boot box. I remove the rear braces, dropped the bootbox back in and then from underneath marked where the clearance holes I had cut were. Removed the box, cut the holes and could now slide the guide strips of wood into the position that the rear struct would take.

The reason for putting the wood guides back in is that the hole you need to cut in the box is a very awkward shape - its not just  hole at the top flange but a also a channel extending down from the hole, almost to the floor of the box. By insreting these strips of wood which were about 1/4 the thickness of the brace bars - you can then have a pretty accurate guess at shape and position of the hole required in the bootbox. I drew this shape on with permanent marker, cut it our with the sanding drum on the dremel and it was nigh on perfect both sides first time

I know this is a bit of a lengthy explanation, but I put a lot of thought into it before I did it & this seemed the best way to me as someone who hadn't done it before

Hope this helps