Rennlist - Porsche Discussion Forums - Piper Motorsports roll cage pics

Hey folks,

I recently decided to get a full cage in my car and went with respected cage builder Mitch Piper. http://pipermotorsports.com/ Mitch and Robbie were absolutely great to work with. Mitch did everything I asked him to do and fielded my many, many questions and offered good advice on how to proceed.

I thought carefully about whether to get X bars and use RS door panels or to go with the NASCAR-style bars and gut the doors. The X bars are supposed to be stiffer due to triangulation, but ingress and egress can be limited. At just under six feet and 180 lbs, I’m an average-sized guy. However, I did not want to get a steering wheel quick release since I’m very happy with my Momo Mod .07 wheel and the wheel-to-hand distance. Two more things to buy (I would have to get a steering wheel with a flatter dish) and one more thing to remember to do (having the wheel come off while driving could lead to a bad day. I hate bad days.) No deal.

Regardless, Mitch feels that the NASCAR bars are safer because of the extra distance between the bars and the driver. He's seen his cars get hit and feels that the driver is safer with the NASCAR bars. I asked him to do a modified NASCAR bar by dropping the top bar down a bit to help me get in and out of the car. Although it's preferred to have the bars meet at one point, specifically where the A-pillar bar meets the knee bar, the distance of bar from the knee bar point to the actual welded point is so short that I don't think the placement will make much of a difference in a side impact.

Piper's work is super-clean. All of the tubes are placed as close to the body panels as possible. He removed the stock knee bar and put the cage knee bar as far away as possible. I like to sit really close to the wheel and wanted the bar to be as far away as possible. He also carved away part of the dash to mount the A-pillar cage bar as close to the stock A-pillars as he could.

The doors retain the stock side impact bar and use the stock glass. Mitch used trick quick release pins that hold the glass in place. Pull the pin and the glass drops right down. Since I tow with an open trailer, having a weathertight car is crucial, as is the security factor when staying overnight at less-than-desirable locations. Going with Lexan made no sense at all since Lexan is harder to slide in the stock window tracks and is more vulnerable to hooliganism. Besides, the stock glass was already paid for. For the door release, Mitch welded up some thin tubes and ran some cabling through it, looped it and cushioned it with some black surgical tubing. I added some trim pieces to to the areas where the sheetmetal was removed to prevent cuts. http://www.pegasusautoracing.com/pro...p?Product=4346

For maximum protection and stiffness symmetry, I went with dual roof bars and cross diagonals out back. It didn’t add that much weight to add another bar or two, and I’ll be all set for any regs that require more bracing. I am going to have to train the neighbor's two year old kid to clean my back window...

I'm not sure what the weight is, but gutting the door panels and removing the foam insulation in the back seat offset the extra tubing. With 1/8 of a tank of gas, I still have to carry about 30 lbs of ballast to make weight, so the full cage didn’t make the car even porkier than it already is.

Mitch painted the cage, too, which is a challenge in a car with a full interior (When is PCA going to do away with this requirement? We have to make weight, anyway. The guy who wants to drive his car off of the street and club race it would not be at a disdvantage if he had a full interior. Sorry, getting side-tracked.), which I made even more difficult by asking that the cage be painted silver. Mitch painted most of the tubes while they were out of the car and then welded them in, using carboad to mask off the interior. The silver paint is a readily-available industrial-grade Rustoleum. Although it's not a 100% perfect match for my polar silver, it's close enough and looks great. Touching up scratches is very easy since the paint blends so well.

I also just installed the Recaro Pro Racer HANS seat and Pole Position seat (nabbed on Ebay for $350!!) What an ordeal that was; nothing like just plopping my old GT3 seats into the car. I used Sparco sliders for both seats. For the Pro Racer, I stuck with the Recaro side mounts but had to drill the rear mounting points to drop the seat height a bit. It made a one hell of a difference. I’m going to put spacers (3” and 4” diameters to spread the load) in between the seat and the side mounts to compensate for the narrower seat needing to fit the wider floor pan mounting points.

For the Pole Position, I used Sparco side mounts and had to cut away part of the rear ears to clear the seat belt holes. Thankfully, I have a chop saw with a metal cutting blade. BTW, the Sparco side mounts matched up perfectly for both the Pole Position and the Pro Racer. Additionally, keep in mind that you’ll have to cut the tubular Sparco seat release bar in half and insert a steel rod to lengthen the release to mate up with the 410mm wide stock floor pan mounts that the sliders must attach to. I ended up using JB Weld for the first time and have been very impressed with it, although it’s not in a very highly stressed application. The stuff was easy to work with and looks just like the seat other seat release that Piper properly welded up.

All hopes of being to pull all of the racing stuff out of the 993 and sell it as a street car just went out the window…