| Roll Cage Fabrication |
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| After much reading online and driving around for the first summer, I realized
that more protection was in order. I am not talking about condoms or anything like that; I am referring to
rollover protection.
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| When I met my girlfriend, she had a similar Jeep to mine, but hers had a full
roll cage in it. I liked the look of it a lot. It had been powder coated black and really set off the Jeep
while at the same time providing protection for the driver.
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| So I set out to see about how I could get some protection for my melon. I found
some kits in 4wd as well as some
other on-line providers at eBay.
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| With a lot of searching, I finally found a guy that had a full roll cage and I set
off to check it out. The cage was custom built for a CJ-5, but the rear part that mounts to the fender wells as
well as the feet that mount to the floor were a little rusty, but for $100.00, I figured I could cut off the rust
and mate it up to the existing roll cage that I had on the Jeep.
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| I brought it home and got in contact with a welder that was a friend of a
friend. He said he could do the job and the Jeep was left so he could start the task. Everything but the
driver's seat was removed from the Jeep so welding slag wouldn't permanently attach itself to it and the
front clip was trimmed and fit to the back half of the roll cage.
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| Unfortunately it took quite a while to get the front half and the back half to
line up correctly and there was a lot of fitting and removing the cage over and over again until everything
lined up as it should.
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| With the new feet in place, the cage was place into the Jeep for the last time
and now it is sitting as it was supposed to from the beginning. Dropping it off at the powder coaters was a
breeze and they should have it done in a couple of weeks.
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| Unfortunately I don't have a finished picture yet as the completed roll cage is
getting powder coated as we speak. It is going to take a couple of weeks to complete this, but when it is
finished, I will post up some pictures.
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| Lessons Learned the Hard Way |
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So, my lessons learned here would have to be that you are going to remove the
full setup a bunch of times when you do this, so make sure you have an extra set of hands.
Also, you will have to fit the cage and tack it in place and complete the full welding on the outside of the
Jeep. This will take some time, so make sure it is what you want and tack it in place and then finish up the
final welding outside the Jeep and then put it back in to make sure it fits the way you want.
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| Conclusions |
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This is a pretty difficult fabrication to do, so make sure you find someone that
is experienced in welding to do it. Looking back this probably would have been better with new parts and not
trying to use existing parts. I got a good deal on the whole roll cage, so I went with it instead. The whole
thing ran about $350.00 total all said and done. This included the labor and the new pieces of metal that had
to be fit to the cage.
This is also a very time consuming process, so you will have to take about a full day to do this. Make sure that
you measure twice before you cut for it will have to be added back if you mess up. Also, make sure the welds
are strong as this is going to protect you in the case of a roll over, and I don't know about you, but I would
rather walk away from a roll over then become a permanent fixture of the ground. Take your time and good luck!
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