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TopSpeed,
My receipt indicates it’s a model DD340. It was purchased new about 10 years ago and never used. It's been sitting high and dry in my attic. Model DD340 is now apparently called a Model 60340. Mine is made of “alloy” per the receipt. I think that means it must be chome-moly. Autopower doesn’t do that anymore – because “they don’t have to.” I discussed this with the salesman. Apparently, the SCCA changed the rule to require the same diameter of roll bar or cage, regardless of metal alloy, so it took away the incentive to use the (stronger, more expensive and harder to weld) Cr-Mo tubing instead of mild steel. Because Cr-Mo is stronger, it used to be legal (and just as strong) to have it be a smaller diameter or wall thickness (not sure which, in this case, if either). That meant a lighter bar. But it became a burden for the SCCA to verify the authenticity of alloy type, so they decided to require everyone to have the same dimension of tubing, regardless of metal type. So now all their bars are made of drawn over mandrel (DOM) mild steel tubing; this takes the stress off the owner to prove what he has, and it make it easier to tech the cars. Hence alloy bars disappeared, because they simply cost more and no one was allowed to take advantage of their superior strength. This all seems moot anyway, unless you're racing in SCCA. But it's irrelevent there too, because if you were racing you'd need a cage anyway!
Both my rollbar and the current Autopower model 60340 roll bar, are for all 911s through the 964 series, except cabriolets. Mine has the optional removable cross brace and harness bar tube, which make it more friendly for back seat use. According to the Autopower site, those removable tubes are available on the current model too -- at what is likely a considerable extra cost -- but I don't know for how much. My suspicion is that through one of Autopower's distributors, you'd pay well in excess of $600 for this bar today, plus shipping.
The bar I have is absolutely perfectly new with no blemishes and all the hardware.
Rob
Last edited by Rob 930; 06-21-2010 at 10:56 PM..
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