Cantrell roll bar install and weights

Today I started the process of installing the Cantrell roll bar that has been sulking on my garage floor all winter, together with my OMP race seats and harnesses. I also began the process of replacing the stock 18-way super-luxe seats in the car with my OMP track seats. for fun, I weighed everything as I went along to see what the net loss or gain would be.

The old seats weighed:
Passenger 63.8
Driver 59.0 (no idea why the difference)
Total weight out 122.8

Seat bases x 2 = 11.6
OMP seats with sliders x 2 = 73.6
Roll bar 35.2
Total weight in 120.4

Total weight savings 2.4

Amazingly close, eh? By the time I factor in the harnesses, it will be a virtual push. I will also remove the Bose subwoofer, the other radio speakers, the amplifier (the Bose system sucks, and I never listen to it) and a bunch of sound deadening, so I’ll save a little bit.

The roll bar is a quality piece and went in pretty easily, although I still have to loosen everything up again to do the final tweaking. Cantrell provides templates to cut all the many trim pieces that have to come out to do the install, but I’m tempted to leave most of them out. Yes, this will make the car plenty noisy (er), but it’s morphing into a gnarly track car anyway. Or, as my wife would say, it’s being “ruined."

I am glad to have this (mostly) done. I think that the HANS device may well have saved me from serious badness when I stuffed my Corvette into a wall four years ago, and I have been nervous about running without it in the intervening years.