For this project, I had decided to build a half cage for my Porsche Cayman S. This year I began tracking and auto-crossing my car and decided I should install a roll cage in case of a rollover and as a place to mount six-point harnesses too. This is commonly done and there are many places to buy the cages, but with my previous metalworking and welding experience, I decided to build it myself.
Below are two examples of existing cages that I based by design off of. I also referenced the PCA handbook to make sure it would pass their tech inspection.
After getting a plan in my head I began maying the first parts. This was the strut tower mounts seen below.
While getting in and out of the car I took the rear bumper off and masked to make sure I did not damage anything.
Below is one of the finished mounts with the strut bar that went between the struts.
Here is the beginning of the cross brace and at the bottom, you can see the strut brace from the picture above. It unbolts from the mounts.
Some of the tig welded 4130 cromoly connectors.
At this point, I had the main hoop in which was a real challenge to make. It had to be symmetrical and all the bends had to be on the same plane. This was made especially hard by the lack of accuracy in my manual tube bender,
This was at the point of final wending. I had some trouble getting the joints to line back up because of shrinking caused by the heat of welding. I ended up having to cut some of the connectors and rewelding them.
The final test fit before powder coating.
And then the cage was powder coated to match the factory blue of my cars interior. You can also see how the harness connects to the harness bar on the cage.
Overall this project took many weekend and many mistakes to get it done, but I learned a lot from the process and the satisfaction of knowing I built it cannot be beaten!
qw
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