My homemade harness bar (made by Sam Crumpacker of Texas NASA CMC years ago) made a huge improvement. I'm sure a cage would do even more but I was quite surprised.
I had a modified MM 6pt in my '89 convertible. (It's been sitting in my garage for a while, as I pulled it out to do some interior refurb.) As castine917 said, based on the jacking the car up with and without the rollbar installed, it definitely improves chassis stiffness - and that was just with it bolted in.
Ancient picture during initial install:
We decided to just weld the door bars in (instead of leaving them as swing-out), and also added a diagonal in the main hoop. Welding the door bars in was a mistake - just made it a pain in the ass to climb in and out of the car for normal, around town driving.
The guy doing the install welded some 1x2" box sections below the floor where the main hoop and door bars landed. You can see the 1x2" here between the MM full-length SFCs and the convertible rocker sill reinforcements:
I had a custom bar installed in my 86 'vert - bolt-in 4-point. The builder built raised reinforced box-mounts with captured nuts at each footing. Two cross bars and a harness bar. Huge improvement in chassis rigidity.
Thanks. Initially I wanted to keep the rear seat when the bar was removed (the cross bars are too intrusive even if one could argue it's safe for passengers). But the car and I have moved on from the need. And although the bar is a 10 minute, one-man job to remove (install a little longer due to bolt-hole alignment), it is now fully padded and covered with matching seat material. No desire or need to remove now; hence, no rear seat.
Thanks for the tip. I'll order a MM 6 point roll bar with swing out bars.
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