Please critique our cage in progress

I might see a problem and it might just be the angle.  You are going to have a problem getting doorbars in.  It looks like your main hoop is wider than the B-pillar.  You do not want the door bars to be more complex than they need to be.

For the spreader plates, If you want more area you should be able to make the plate follow the frame rail curve around the strut tower, it doesnt have to be square.  Adding a piece up the curve of the shock tower will help give the flat plate more strength and will add to the total area of the spreader plate (like you did.)  If you can make the curve out of one piece ( a vice, a torch to heat it, and a big hammer) its better than a few little pieces.

Are you planning on pulling the roof back or cutting access holes to weld the top of the main hoop welds?  If not, you may want to cut holes in the floor under the main hoop so it can drop through (with the back stays off) after its tacked up well so you can get at the top welds.

I do the back stays after i get the main hoop and the a pillar tubes done and in place.  Basically I start with the main locating piece (main hoop) and start with the hardest pieces first and work your way to the easiest.  This leaves easy pieces to finish off with that are easier to adjust and makes the tough pieces easier to fit when you need to adjust stuff a little to fit them.

Make sure you put your seat in to see where your tallest driver is with the seat pretty much in position to make sure it all works out as you add pieces around the seat.  It looks like you have plenty of room.

If you are welding near any glass you care about put something up to keep splatter off the glass.  It does nasty stuff to the glass.

I put the main hoop diagonal close to the corner, but up to maybe 8"? away is acceptable (double check that if you want but yours looks ok.)  Diagonals are stronger when they tie into corners.  Tieing all the tubes near each other in essentially 1 spot makes it much stronger but makes the notches much tougher to do correctly with multiple notches per end.

Some pics of the cage I built for our car here, http://s589.photobucket.com/albums/ss33 … ?start=all  They are in order for the most part of how they got done.

it might be just me, but it looks like the main hoop is crooked in relation to the roof. That is, it appears that the driver's side is closer to the roof than the passenger side. While I don't think this it unacceptable, It would bug the hell out of me.

Thanks for all of the comments

JRBE: I do plan to cut holes in the roof if needed to get to the top welds.  THe bar is just far enough away from the roof that I may be able to get to it, but if I'm not happy with the weld quality, then I will cut.  I originally wanted to drop it through the floor, but there isn't really enough room under the mounting points to drop it down much, though if I pull out the spreader plates it will drop about 1".

We have checked fit with a tall driver and our current placement, and we have plenty of room.  I'll see about moving the diagonal over a little, it is only about 1" away from the backstay, enough to get the welder in there.

Rob: That was what I originally wanted to do, and the picture makes the area look bigger than it is.  The area just in front of the strut tower is smaller than the tube itself, and the area around it is a convoluted mess of compound cuves.  Making plates to cover it would be a nightmare.  Where the backstays connect to the main hoop there is good access to weld, fortunately.

Serj, yea it is, by about 1/2".  This was not intentional, but once it was in place, we left it as it gave another 1/2" of clearance above the driver.  It isn't perfectly symmetrical, and that bugs me too, but I don't want to make yet another main hoop.

Fatboys: Close, its a 91 Civic Wagovan 4WD.  I think your suggestion of how to weld the halo is exactly what we will do.    The seat is mounted, and we have checked the clearances, and I'll put it back in to do the harness bar. I'll be careful to double check the belt angles, as last year we had to add another harness bar in the Wartburg at the track as ours was too high, don't want to go through that again, hence why I'm asking questions now, it is a lot easier to fix this stuff in the garage with a month to go than at the track.