Please review my cage design (Page 1 of 3)

The roof is only 36" wide.  Door bars are 8" out to out vertically. How high you think they should be? I was thinking about putting them in after the seat is installed. If the bottom horizontal tube is around the same elevation as my knees as sitting in seat you think that would be effective?  I'm leaning more towards effectiveness rather than bare minimum. After all it's purpose is to keep our drivers safe

It's a 1998 VW Jetta GLX. We call it Smokesgaggin.

Door bar separation should be good then. Rules are as follows

It's a good idea to put the door bars in last. Get the seat in place, get the main cage elements in, then do door bars so you can see what you need to clear. As far as height. I like this setup (see picture). Put in a true sil bar, then put the X above it. you can do it as you outlined above with two bent bars instead of the traditional 3 pieces.

Looks awesome!

Probably a typo in the original post, but tubing is supposed to be a minimum of .095" thickness.

As for the upper door bar on the passenger side: Consider bringing the top bar at the halo all the way up to the junction with the harness bar (like how you have the front of the top tube connected at the dash bar).

If this is your first cage, you'll have lots of fun notching those A-pillar bars to meet tightly in the halo tube on the radius. I really like that design. Executing it takes patience.

Same for those gussets at the halo-hoop junction. I'm not sure what the gussets on the roof plane will do in terms of resulting safety increase vs effort. Sizing up, notching and welding in that gusset would likely be a day's work for me.

It all looks very safe. Nice work. Be sure to post up pics of the actual cage when you're done so there's a record of this effort for others in the future to look at and learn from.

You can try to tie the seat mount into the roll cage so that if the cage is ever moved  due to contact with another car or fixed object the seat will move with the cage. It's done in many types of racing but I'm not sure what Lemons thinks of this set up?

That script is pretty cool. I've used it in the past and it works well. I'm pretty much hooked on Rhino3D. I use it for my cnc toys and anything surface related at work that ACAD won't handle, like unfolding surfaces with .001 precision for plasma or laser cutting . I use Advance Steel too for structural/architectural steel work if there is going to be hundreds of sheets of shop drawings. I still usually end up back at Rhino to create NC data however because of it's sheer awsomeness.

As far as the seat goes I took another look at it and I found another way.  I will definitely post pics in here of our progress.  I changed my thoughts about a few cage things based on input from you guys so your comments are appreciated very much. If your in Joliet in July come drink some of our beer

Something like this acceptable?

Not sure why my images won't link.

I've been having issues sharing pictures hosted by google on a number of forums. I've given up and started just throwing them all to photobucket or similar for forum duty.

Here's where I'm at currently. I'll check/confirm a few dimensions obviously prior to cutting tube and it's likely the dash bar will move up or down etc.. the spreader plates don't really look this way in reality so all tubes attaching to those will have some material to trim off.

LEFT...

FRONT..

Any more suggestions/comments, concerns? I'm going to save seat discussion for a separate topic.

Thanks!!!

I agree with this.   It takes very little extra effort, gives you an extra margin of safety,
and gives you a bit of extra room to work when strapping the driver in.
I was able to bow mine out at least two inches without cutting into the door at all.

Here's what it would look like at 2" offset assuming the B pillar between front/rear door doesn't get in the way.  If it does I could just move the rear bends forward until it does clear. I'm not doing these until the seat's mounted but it helps me visualize and better explain my design and how I interpret what you guys are telling me.  

I think after the seat's in and we have real dimensions to work with, we'll tack in the top bar to see how it is in reality. All my drivers should be okay with it's location. Does tech actually test the drivers escape from fully strapped in position?

Oh ok I get it now. It's not additional bends, it's more like they're rolled out of plane to lean out more. Pictures say more than enough . I like how the top bar is higher at B pillar being closer to the first bend.

Thanks again. Once I get some tube fit I'll post some pics. I wasn't paying attention and at the worst time possible I ran my bottle empty. Need to run to work to borrow one or weekend is shot.