Remove Part of Safety Devices Roll Bar?
 

I own an '87 930 that has a Safety Devices full cage roll bar. I'm thinking of removing the forward and side portions of the bars leaving just the rear bars in place. Is this OK to do?

The reason for doing this is that I don't want to smack my head on the bars in the event of an accident on the street. And also, that the sunvisors would not work with the bars in place.

Any comments? Thanks.

Yes its ok...

Really.... think about it.. the roll cage was installed for track safety probably..

Would removing that for street use make the car from Porsche less safe?

So you are removing the front section of the roll cage, leaving the main hoop behind the front seats, right?

Ok, so you have gone back to the stock situation in front, but still retaining a potential head knocker behind the seats

What? why is that? Simple: Accidents are almost never simple straight shot straight on to an object. There are usually secondary impacts outside and inside the vehicle. Your neck can extend about 18" in any direction, when the conditions are "right" . (Don't believe me? Go find a video that the Hans Device people produced= scary!) Given that the stock porsche seats are designed to yield under certain impact situations, you can be exposed to the rear cage in the worst way.
Do you have any impact foam on the main hoop? Think that helps? If you had a helmet on it would, otherwise not much on a bare noggin.

We sell roll bars, and they are for off road competition use only. You sign a waiver acknowledging that before you can purchase one. Yeah sure, they look sexy in the latest RS, ST , R version cars we build, but the owners accept the responsibility that its intended for racing use with proper safety equipment in use

1 - its your car
2 - if you do its not a cage its a roll bar ? is do you track it if so will a roll bar pass tech
in your class
3 - in a side impact the hoop may fold in and impale the occupant
4 - why not make the cage removable for daily use and install for track use , only
reason i can see for a bar or cage on a street car is the oooooooooooooh factor ?
5 - don't know if ive been any help but just my 2cents

steve ... .:cool:

The other big danger with roll bars, beyond what TRE so rightly mentions, is that many of them have a horizontal member all the way across the car at about shoulder height behind the seats. If you were to suffer the classic 911 one-car accident--spinning and then backing into an immovable object at speed--that will quickly snap your neck or break your back.

Happened to a PCA racer at Lime Rock some years ago when he spun and backed into a tire wall--killed him--which is why I installed a large steel seatback brace that cupped the back of my Recaro seats when I had a rollbar in the car (which I've since removed and sold since I've stopped DE'ing, and having one in the car on the street is simply insane).

I've read all the guys on other threads about street rollbars making fun of us pussies and saying they can't come anywhere near a rollbar when they sit in the seat and arch their back and move around as vigorously as they can, so how can they contact it in a crash? As I've said enough times that people are surely tired of reading it, as an EMS volunteer I see what actually happens in car crashes, and where heads and bodies go when they aren't just "arching their backs." In a 40G impact, you _will_ hit that rollbar.

But then you're wearing a good helmet, right?

pm'd you

That's not a comforting thought about the potential neck/back injuries from the bar behind the seat. My car has carbon fiber racing seat. Here's a pic shown below. I suppose this seat can fail.

Steve,
Do you have pics of a large steel seatback brace that cupped the back of the seats?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1252098998.jpg


I've received several inquirees about my cage. I want everyone to know that I'll be keeping the cage even when I remove it.

Thanks for your interest though.

Nope, no photos, and it's gone--sold. It was a T-shaped apparatus, the ends of the T crossbar folded about 35 degrees forward on each end to "cup" the seatback, and the vertical part of the T extended down to about the bottom of my spine. The T was welded and gusseted to a heavy tube that passed through a collar bolted to the rollbar's horizontal crossmember, with a couple of through-bolt holes so the position of the device vis-a-vis the seatback could be set for me, or for my shorter daughter. (My wife's a serious rock-, ice- and mountain-climber; she has no time for such nerdy activities as driving in DEs...)

The inside--toward the seatback--part of the device was padded with a 3/4"-thick layer of energy-absorbing foam sheet, sort of like good roll-bar padding but much denser and not bendable.

I've seen one-size-fits-all commercial seatback supports--I think Brey-Krause sells one--but they're about the size of dessert plates and seem to assume a super-strong, non-breakable seatback. Which is a pretty expensive seat, if it exists...