Dang - GOOD ONE!
Before we loaded them up with people, we made them carry stone blocks.
How do you mount the roll cage to the frame on a unibody car? (asking for a friend)The 6pt rollcage that i had for my K5 Blazer did not pass through the floorboards to the frame but was directly bolted over 6 of the 8 body mounts. 1 on each side at the A pillar, 1 on each side just forward of the rear wheel well (where the removable top came off) and 1 on each side at the end of the frame by the tailgate. 2" .120 wall tubing with gussets at the joints and coped / notched tubing.
I really wanted to run 2 more legs down from the rear horizonal bar at the back on a angle to the body mounts just behind the rear wheel well, but was a poor college kid and really didn't see the cost per safety factor necessary..
Thankfully I never had to test its strength and since I was in Michigan, it wasn't a rock crawler and more of a extra safety measure for the sand dunes in case things went south cresting the peaks.
I laugh at the guys (even though I have on my gladiator) who call these things roll bars that mount the top the bed. That they are not. Its nothing more then a light bar and will offer little to no protection in a rollover situation. Those bedsides will crumple all day long.
At the end of the day, its all about passenger safety. And if you're bending frames just above where passengers are riding, that seems to be an issue. I know the OP is addressing it with a frame re-enforcement, but I also think he needs to look at the bigger picture and look at additional precaution's like a better seat frame design or roll cage modifications to make the system work together as a whole and not just individual components.
K5 Blazer. Square body. 1970's. Body on frame.
Hemi Gremi in the works?
A member of our AMC Races group is forced to sell his project......... that's one of the pics. Likely was going to be a 401 - it's what most AMC racers use.
Thank you. When we studied the Gladiator we took that factor into our design. What we couldn’t have known at the time was the marginal strength factor in that spot. We’ll reinforce all of them as time goes on.A member of our AMC Races group is forced to sell his project......... that's one of the pics. Likely was going to be a 401 - it's what most AMC racers use.
"frame connectors" connect the front of the rear frame rails to the rear of the front frame rails to prevent body twist under the extreme torque but I've never paid attention to how the cages are anchored. Likely home-brew frame members or steel plates.
As long as a cage is mounted to the body where the body-to-frame mounts are, all should be good on a full-frame vehicle. There's a lot of flex between body and frame and to anchor directly to the frame would negate any frame/body isolation rendering it subject to a lot of body stresses, harmonics and so on that the frame usually takes care of.
I'd agree with your body mounting plates if you were simply caging the passenger compartment as the body is mounted on rubber isolators. As soon as you are turning the bed into a passenger compartment that goes out the window as the bed is hard mounted to the frame. In that instance the only right way to do it is to tie in to the frame in my opinion.. Of course I'm no engineer so my opinion doesn't matter... but if I'd designed that cage the frame wouldn't have bent where it did period.A member of our AMC Races group is forced to sell his project......... that's one of the pics. Likely was going to be a 401 - it's what most AMC racers use.
"frame connectors" connect the front of the rear frame rails to the rear of the front frame rails to prevent body twist under the extreme torque but I've never paid attention to how the cages are anchored. Likely home-brew frame members or steel plates.
As long as a cage is mounted to the body where the body-to-frame mounts are, all should be good on a full-frame vehicle. There's a lot of flex between body and frame and to anchor directly to the frame would negate any frame/body isolation rendering it subject to a lot of body stresses, harmonics and so on that the frame usually takes care of.
I don't think you can really say that........
So a solution for the bed only, taking that part of the frame into account makes sense. Typing cab to bed to frame wouldn't work well.
