McFury wrote:whoa there, thats not the only vertical tube of the cage. should be at least seven vertical or near vertical members in the cage, which would put that 24,000 closer to 3500#. but i get your point.
Actually - yeah it is the only that one bar... You don't just barrel roll in the air and land square on your roof.
If you look at a cage from the front like this |/| and you excert a force toward the lower left from the upper right corner - the only bar that is there to prevent the main hoop from collapsing is the diagnal. (this is our roll - you can see that the ENTIRE weight of the car comes down on that corner above the driver in the exact way I describe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv5w15eAOFw )
The other bars will be torqued against their welds and bent against thier bends - in other words the forces will be focused against the least structuraly sound parts of the cage. The only bar that is there being stressed in it's most powerful state (a compression force along it's length) is that diagnal.
--Rob Leone
Schumacher Taxi Service We won the IOE at Southern Discomfort.
We got screwed at The Real Hoopties of New Jersey and we took cars down with us.
We got the curse at Capitol Offense but they wouldn't let us destroy the car.