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Making a Prefabricated Rollcage Fit Like a Custom Can be Easy
If you have spent any amount of time working on street machines, you are well aware that “bolt-on” parts do not always bolt right on. Still, it’s often a lot easier to modify those parts than to fabricate your own. The same holds true for such items as rollcages. Nobody pretends that a prefab cage is going to drop right into place without having to trim a single tube. That’s mainly because the economies of scale dictate that manufacturers make a single design fit as many cars as possible. Unfortunately, a cage that fits many cars probably fits no car perfectly.
If you are like us, you aren’t very concerned about how many cars the rollcage kit you ordered will fit. You care only about how well it will fit your car. There’s no denying that a good prefab cage can save you a lot of time and trouble, because all the heavy lifting has already been done. But if you want it perfect, you are going to have to plan to rework some things on your own–maybe even scrap a tube or two and bend new ones.
Tom Elliott, the owner of BAD Company Rods & Restorations, knows the feeling. As an experienced TheAutoBuilder, he’s done both the prefab and the custom and knows how best to blend the two. For this project, he’s installing a 10-point rollcage kit from Art Morrison into a ’66 Nova. Since this is a street machine that will spend most of its time cruising, the owner understandably wants the cage to both look good and work great. That means the bars need to fit around the new seats, tuck up out of the way so they won’t obstruct the view (looking inside or out) and fit the lines of the car. After all, few things look worse than an upper door bar that runs on an angle against a straight roofline.
By beginning with the kit, Elliott was able to save himself labor and the car’s owner some money. But by spending a little extra time on the details, he was able to create a cage that is custom fit to this car.
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