Retro styled / Offset Rollbar

[vindi49]

I've always liked the retro styled offset rollbars you sometimes see about, but really dislike the fact they are made from aluminium, and only rest on the upper parcel shelf, so don't offer any impact protection. After having this as an idea for about 18 months, I started to make one back in March, but properly out of steel and attached to something a bit more solid!

If you're a bit confused as to what I'm talking about, here's one I found earlier (hope whoever owns this car doesn't mind!!)...




I wanted the basic shape to be the same, but to go a bit higher to use the full height of the soft top. The rear brace would obviously go down to attach next to the suspension strut. The plan was to add a harness bar as well, partly to act as a cabin brace side to side. It was to be 2" od tubing (maybe 2.5?).... I also wanted to get the attachment points as strong as possible without compromising the seat belts, something that a lot of off the shelf bars completely fail at!

End of march and we had messed about enough, so we made a simple hoop to see if we'd got the seat belt fitment right...

Rear view, this is significantly higher than the ally ones, so is above the height of me wearing a helmet in a standard Mk2 seat.




Front view, plenty of space to the seat and the harness bar will be say far enough back to not get in the way of the seat even fully back. This also shows the bit of the shape I'm not 100% happy with, this one comes up from the bracket at about 80-85 degrees and then goes around in one bend. Ideally it would come up at 90 degrees for a few inches, then do a 15 degree turn and continue up, then do the rest of the turn closer in to the seat / headrest?




Better solution for the seat belt... on the ally one I had, the seat belt is pushed off to the side so does not retract as smoothly as it should. This one works perfectly!!



At this point, I decided to make this one to fit my Mk2 and we'd do a Mk1 version later

To be continued...

Russell.

[vindi49]

Part deux

Managed to get a day off work early in April, so I spent a day messing with the bar a bit more. This is how the bar looked by mid morning... harness bar now in place, mounted in my Mk2.



And this is mid afternoon... base plate cut to shape to clear the wiring loom on the Mk2, back leg added but not welded in place yet.



This is late afternoon, with the bar all welded up, off the car. Ignore the rear leg base plate, it made sense when I was cutting it out but as soon as it was attached i had a classis D'oh moment!!


So this had taught us loads about how to make them and how to keep the seatbelts working well, how to enable it to be fitted with little or no cutting of metalwork, utilising holes already in place to minimise drilling etc, etc.

This is the version for a glass screen, but the next stage was to make a second version for the plastic screen cars that would have the rear leg going a lot further back. The shape of the main hoop would change a bit to have a slight bend almost straight away, rather than it just going straight up from the drivers side.

This had cost me an absolute fortune to get made up to that stage, easily double what I had predicted... basically 3 solid days of labour costs... obviously a lot of that is messing about trying things, so a one off cost.

So by the end of the day, my car was back on the drive and it was time to evaluate what we'd made...



Side view... not quite the 30 degrees the MSA in the UK want!!!


Clearance to the glass screen... there is a bit you could gain, but nothing that would make enough of a difference


Ideally the bar would sit behind the wiring loom hole, but with the tube there the roof won't fold down as the glass screen can't lie flat. We decided to move on to the Mk1 version, and come back to revisit the Mk2 design.

Russell.

[vindi49]

Le Troisieme

A slight aside, but a friend of mine added a photoshop onto my ideas thread...

Potato CHOP



(It's a slow day in the office!)

Cerbs

Food for thought... looks really cool I think?

Russell.

[vindi49]

Le Quatrieme (? feel free to correct my French someone!)

Skip forward to early May, and I managed to get another day on the bar. The aim was to get it ready for my Mk1, we had decided to keep with the same shape main hoop as its a lot simpler than the double bend on the ally one in my first pics.

Anyway, pics is what you're after I'll guess?






Not perfect, but came out nice I think? The rear brace angle is over 30 degrees which makes it eligible for hillclimbing / sprinting in the UK... not that I'd use it for that, but someone might and its a good thing to aim for. Next stage is off to the powdercoaters... which didn't happen until yesterday in the end!!

So today I got the roll bar sitting in place... not all bolted down yet, but just wanted to see how it looked and check clearance etc.







I think I'm pretty happy with it overall, the main hoop would be better aesthetically with the double bend but this way is (I think) stronger. The very last picture was taken with my seat in its correct position, so I'm miles away from the bar... bear in mind that my floor has been dropped though, so is about 3 inches lower than normal.

Russell.

[Demon I Am]

That's pretty crazy looking. The photoshopped version is more along the lines of something I would want. Great work!

[— Phatmiata —]

very cool!!! Would look great in polished stainless steel!

[Demon I Am]

You. I like the way you think!

[diabeetus]

i have always loved this rollbar. wanna make me one?

[vindi49]

Cheers for the comments everyone, I am looking into Stainless Steel as from what I can tell, if you go for the right variant it will be stronger for the same weight, or just lighter but the same strength. Another option is to go with a cromoly of some sort for similar reasons, or T45.
I would think by the time it was made to be on the other side (left hand drive), shipped over to the states and you'd paid the import tax it would be a pretty insane price... and you have a few guys over there who could make something like this in their sleep!

If anyone did want me to make one I could work out a price, but it would be a one off and fairly expensive, its way too time consuming to do this on a regular basis and I'd have to do a lot of running around to buy the tubes / get it powder coated or whatever!!

Russell.