AlanB
June 10th, 2006, 06:12 PM
As you all probably know about the restructuring of Safety Devices and how its nearly impossible to find any new old stock, that being said, Randy wanted to build an external cage along the lines of the Safety Devices external cage. He was getting tired of scraping and damaging the upper portions of the hardtop and blowing out alpine windows.
We tied the external cage with the factory internal cage using welded on brackets coming off the internal cage and bolting on to the external cage. We replicated the factory style external mounting brackets and used factory rubber gaskets and torx head bolts so that everything matched.
We utilized the factory front windshield hoop but cut off the factory horizontal bar from the hoop and the upper mounting bracket. We also tied the cage to the upper factory mounting bracket with a stub from the middle hoop for more strength.
The entire cage was welded into one piece except for the factory front windshield hoop lower cross bar that was kept stock for easy access to the vents if repairs were needed. The cage unbolts at the mounting points and is easily removed by picking up the entire cage and walking it off the vehicle from the rear to the front.
Much thanks to Randy, JD, and Brian for all the help and input. It was a fun project and I hope it helps anyone out there thinking about doing something similar.
Sorry for the driveway pics, but we just got done putting it back on. Also please note that the cage will be blasted and repainted in a satin black as the body shop messed up by smearing some kind of sealant around all the welded joints making the pretty welds look like total crap and sprayed it a very glossy black.
Attlached are some pics, for larger pics click on the link and “Randy’s Rollcage” album, click on the thumbs and hit the “download” button to show full size pics.
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/alanbates@sbcglobal.net/my_photos
We tied the external cage with the factory internal cage using welded on brackets coming off the internal cage and bolting on to the external cage. We replicated the factory style external mounting brackets and used factory rubber gaskets and torx head bolts so that everything matched.
We utilized the factory front windshield hoop but cut off the factory horizontal bar from the hoop and the upper mounting bracket. We also tied the cage to the upper factory mounting bracket with a stub from the middle hoop for more strength.
The entire cage was welded into one piece except for the factory front windshield hoop lower cross bar that was kept stock for easy access to the vents if repairs were needed. The cage unbolts at the mounting points and is easily removed by picking up the entire cage and walking it off the vehicle from the rear to the front.
Much thanks to Randy, JD, and Brian for all the help and input. It was a fun project and I hope it helps anyone out there thinking about doing something similar.
Sorry for the driveway pics, but we just got done putting it back on. Also please note that the cage will be blasted and repainted in a satin black as the body shop messed up by smearing some kind of sealant around all the welded joints making the pretty welds look like total crap and sprayed it a very glossy black.
Attlached are some pics, for larger pics click on the link and “Randy’s Rollcage” album, click on the thumbs and hit the “download” button to show full size pics.
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/alanbates@sbcglobal.net/my_photos