Chassis Strengthening...

[B6T]

How well do you think this would work?



I designed this to fit a Festiva that would be street driven every day. The main hoop sits just slightly reward of the B-pillar so that the factory seatbelts can still be used (for legality reasons), and the bars fit very closely to the profile of the roof, rockers, and A-pillars so that a car with this roll cage could still be driven comfortably because none of the bars would intrude into the passengers space. You'd have to remove the rear seat of course.

You can't see it, but there are many screw ups in the modelling of this. I was using Autodesk Inventor to design it. I would have preferred to use Catia V5, and that's what I'll be using when I design the cage for my project. With catia, I'll be able to place points in virtual space and then create lines through those points, then create a sweeping profile (the tubing) through the lines. With Inventor, I could only draw points and lines on a plane, which is fine for the most part but limits some areas, like the compound bends in the a-pillar bars.

I'm never going to make this, I just had to do a project for school and I decided to do a roll cage for my car. I just wanted to share it with you guys/gals.

[Eccentric]

It would work fairly well

Where you have the straight bars from the main hoop down to the halo hoop, it would be better if they were an x-brace. Right now the upper half is what I call a hinge (it probably has it's own term). In a crash the upper part can hinge to the side. An alternative method would be move your diagonal up from the harness bar to the roof section of the main hoop then down to the halo hoop. The lower the door bar main hoop mount lower and make it longer or raise it up to the bend. But then it would interfere with getting in and out. Add some gussets and your good. I'm ignoring the front hoop because I know you were doing it in 2D.

Doing it the pt/ln method is so V4. :wink: I'm just messing with ya do it how ever you want. I would create a couple ref planes, and jump right in with skecthes. Also instead of sweeping a profile. Use sweep/circle/subtype:radius,center that is what it's there for. Even though is says center crv it doesn't have to be a CL it can be any ref crv. There is a tubing designer in V5. It's not really for cage design it's for building construction but it works all right.

Inventor doesn't have a combine crv function? If it can extrude/sweep/revolve a crv to create a surf and intersect surfs then it has combine, it just doesn't know it does. :wink:

Are you going to running and analysis on it? I know what would be fun make a seat and use the human builder to put a guy in the seat.

[B6T]

Hmmmm thanks for the feedback. Once I get V5 running on my computer and draw up the other cage, I'm going to try the things you mentioned!

[Eccentric]

Hmmmm thanks for the feedback. Once I get V5 running on my computer and draw up the other cage, I'm going to try the things you mentioned!

If you need any help or are having problems with some thing I can probably help. I've been using V5 for about 2 years now and did V5 tutoring.

[B6T]

^ I can tell! PM me with your instant messanger contact (I think you're already on my AOL list though)