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autopower roll bar question

936 views 10 replies 5 participants last post by  2k2GT 
#1 ·
How much welding (if any) is needed to put into a fox? Doesn't seem that bad. I don't have access to a welder. I'm trying to decide between the roll bar and a phb/ta combination with some cash i have.

The car will be autocrossed and open tracked this year and wil have some DD duties. I'm thinking the bar will be the best (safe) money spent.

Then, is it advisable to use the stock seats with harnesses and the bar?

Thanks
 
#3 ·
I use an Autopower bolt-in, and because it's a bolt-in, there's no welding required. I use stock seats and harnesses, with the optional harness bar attached, but when I run the seat is all the way back against the bar. Shorter drivers should consider a more race-oriented seat.

However, the thin-ness of the floorpan material and the small size of the rollbar's mounting pad gave me the heeby-jeebies over the winter. So before I re-installed it again for this season, I bolted and glued in some larger reinforcement plates of 16-ga steel to spread the load around a larger area of the floorpan and up into the upright that forms the basis for the rear seat pan.

The 3 bolts in the middle of that plate are where the Autopower's baseplate holes are.



Here's how the downbars bolt in, at least in my version



The whole install before I installed the high-density padding



And the final install when I still had Corbeau seats
 
#4 ·
I pretty much thought they were bolt in. Does it come pre-painted? I'm thinking of some good seats, too. I have a 38 waist, so I'd like to try some first, but no good places around. Summit is local, but no good seats there.
 
#6 ·
It comes either bare or with this cheap black paint to basically keep it from rusting. You can touch it up a bit with a black paint marker(or at least I do), or just use the padding to cover it up.

Expect to see scratches/scrapes on the cheap black paint....it's merely a rust inhibitor.
 
#5 ·
Ha! I did the same thing on mine(the extra wide metal bracing). Although mine doesn't go up on the door sill like yours, it's about the same size though.

I didn't wanna post anything about it because I would need to use the words "roll bar" and "bolt in" for what I did. I figured that was open game for all the welding/roll bar/chassis stiffening Nazi's to come in and tell me how unsafe my car is and that I shouldn't track my car with other cars on the track.

;)
 
#9 ·
I hear ya. Same reason I installed one in my 66......or was it after my friend told me the story of how he rolled his DD Saab at Lime Rock.
 
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