Quote Originally Posted by RexRacer19 View Post
The NASCAR style bars add more metal to the area adjacent to the driver, but are generally full of dead load paths. In nearly every example of a NASCAR bar shown in this thread, there is a nice mesh of tubes forming the side impact. BUT, that mesh of tubes gets attached to a single vertical tube in the front, and a single vertical tube in the rear mid-span. When having to take on an impact such as Richie's, The tubes that the NASCAR bars are attached to will be the first to deform/fail in a massive impact. Just like in Richie's crash, they will be in tension, which is less than ideal.

-Jeff
agree with what you are saying, but when I designed mine, I thought that bending, of the main hoop and a pillar bar would allow for some absorption.(the main hoop only has about a 2ft span where it isn't reinforced in another direction, and even less on the a pillar as I have a bar going to the firewall.) If I had added additional bars in line with the nascar bars to say the rear or the opposite b pillar, their would be zero absorption and in a hard blow my brain would probably fly out the passenger window.

My nascar bar also only has two bends( /-----\ ) on each bar not four as I see many do ( _/---\_ ), so a blow on the nascar bar will push the a and b pillars at 45*, not even relying on the welds to hold them in place, cause the bar will be forced into the a and b pillars, as opposed to the bars with four bends that you are now relying on the welds to hold the nascar bar to the pillars, putting the welds in shear when hit. Which as someone mentioned even when the welds are done properly the metal around them ends up shearing.

Please don't think I am trying to say my cage is perfect, just trying to give some insight to the thoughts I put into it, especially as I said my biggest fear is being T-Boned.

I personally think the passenger side should be able to give a little, so it reduces the g load in an accident but on the driver side you don't have that much room for it to give, until the driver begins to be crushed. So as Greg said I think on the driver side you need to accept the higher g load, instead of being crushed. That is also the reason I have a fully bolstered seat to reduce the chance of snapping my neck.