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Not worth it if you ask me. A rollover accident is extremely unlikely, and the rest of the time you're just carrying around extra weight and making the car less convenient to use every day.
Technically, having a roll bar in your street car is more of a safety liability than an asset. If you aren't wearing a helmet and your head makes contact with it, you're going to have a bad day.
I have a bolt-in rollbar for mine, but it's hanging in the garage until I get ready to go to the track.
With it in I can't have back seat passengers (12 year old daughter or her friends) nor a convenient place to set larger cargo.
A rollbar does help stiffen the chassis some though.
Front, side, and rear reinforcement would be the best ideas IMO. Emphasis on front and side. Distracted driving is the main thing to be most worried about.
Best safety for any car is paying more attention while driving. Too many people zone out while driving. I am not talking about the texters, food eaters, etc. I mean everyone. Each driver should know what's around them in front of them and behind them at all times.
My rule of thumb is to pretend someone tells you there will be a stopped car for an illegitimate reason in your path every time you drive. It will make you more alert while driving. And it's free!
Not worth it if you ask me. A rollover accident is extremely unlikely, and the rest of the time you're just carrying around extra weight and making the car less convenient to use every day.
I hadn't thought of this.....however isn't the rollbar further behind the seat?
the main safety liability is head contact as stated before. It's best to get one in combination with the euro gt3 bucket seats- the design of the seats makes contact with the bar nearly impossible.
I just installed a DAS sport in mine. Yeah it's a big pain to put in. Yes, it all but eliminates storage back there (fixed-back seats will do this anyways). But damn is it cool. And the DAS doesn't impede rear visibility whatsoever- you literally cannot see it in the rear view mirror. I am doing more HPDE track days so I pulled the trigger on mine. Not worth it for a daily driver but worth it if you track some.
I did a lot of research before I selected a roll bar.
I went with a Dassport for a few reasons. Not affiliated with this company, but a very happy customer
Take a look at the photos below, one is the Factory Porsche, another is popular aftermarket brand the third is a Dassport
As everyone can see the BIG difference. The Dassport is a far superior design. The rear mounts directly to the top of the struts, it also doubles a rear strut brace. The rigidity of my chassis increased by a lot. This alone is big.
The second thing you will notice, other roll bars have a front mount to the seat belt bolts, relying on the shear strength of the bolts in the event of a roll over. The dassport used a steel bracket that bolts to the seat belt bolt, but the roll over weight would be dispersed over the unibody sub frame, without welding again big difference.
The third design difference is the cross bar height, this design is far superior for side impact protection.
The forth design difference, is no diagonal bar, which blocks rear view mirror vision (at least for a short chubby guy setting)
The only down side of a Dassport, you have to loose your Bose sound box mounted on the rear deck.
Here is mine, it is functional and looks great.IMO
Something else to mention about the DAS- it is big-boy diameter and big-boy wall-thickness. 1.75" and 0.120" I believe. A lot of "harness bars" out there are 1.5", 1.25" diameter only, and only 0.090" thick or worse. The DAS is heavier because of this (55lbs I think?) but hey if you're gonna go to the trouble- make it stout.
Technically, having a roll bar in your street car is more of a safety liability than an asset. If you aren't wearing a helmet and your head makes contact with it, you're going to have a bad day.
I had one in my C4S anyway.
I thought about mentioning this, but for most designs that people would be looking at, the roll bar is in the back seat behind the front seat headrests, so there's really no way to hit your head on it without going pretty far out of your seat first, which is a whole other problem. I suppose if the seat back broke and you reclined a lot, then you could get up into it. I think it's more of an issue with a full cage, where you'd have bars running across the window top and down the dash, where you could certainly hit it easily if not harnessed and helmeted.
12-12-2018, 01:51 PM
