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I removed the rear support and will probably leave the front support until the full cage goes in next year. With the current supports the OMP seats feel too high, I figure at 6'3" I can use all of the extra head room I can get.
And another worthy consideration...
You will need a bit more room that I do...
It would seem that if either of the 2 seat supports is dong anything it would be the front one. I noticed an increase in the stiffness of my R56 when I installed my roll bar. So the loss of the rear one is likely inconsequential.
The x-brace looks like a good idea, but I won't work for me. My driveway has a really sharp seam at the street and it catches my exhaust every time I back out. Maybe after a new house
Looks good. The Schroth belts are nice. Have you picked out a HANS device to use with those? I use the pro QuickFit as it is compatible with a HANS device and looks very much like what you are getting. It also can be used as a 6 pt harness if I ever get my act in gear and install the OMP seats I have.
The x-brace looks like a good idea, but I won't work for me. My driveway has a really sharp seam at the street and it catches my exhaust every time I back out. Maybe after a new house
Minor update. I DIY'd some seat mounts. This is my first time welding, so I'm happy with the result.
Not bad for a new guy.
The seats are in and the anti-sub belt and lap belts are anchored. With my helmet on,I have about 3" of head room. Now I'm just waiting on the roll bar from Sneed Speed. [rant] I placed my order on the 21st. Before ordering I called to get an estimate on when the roll bar would be shipped. I was told probably Friday, but Monday at the latest. Well, It's Wednesday. I called again today and was again told "Friday, but Monday at the latest." I'm a less than a "Friday, but Monday at the latest" away from cancelling the order. I don't even want to talk about what a pain in the *** it has been to even get someone over there to answer a phone. Or the ignored email when I requested measurements to ensure the shoulder harness would be at the correct angle. When I expressed concern that the the shoulder harness would be above horizontal, it was brushed off with "we've never had a problem, if it doesn't fit, you can send it back." [/rant]
Well,
1. I'm not going to ship a 4 point roll cage back because you could not be bothered to take a measurement or adjust the harness bar height to work in my application.
2. I'm pretty sure these seats are mounted 3" lower than of your other customers.
I should have just ordered one through Bethania Garage or rollcagecomponents.com. Lesson learned.
It looks good from the top. Did you do a test run and cut it in half to see the penetration you got?
Sorry to hear about Sneed. If they do send it, and the harness bar is too high, do your own mod. As long as the bar in general fits, that would be minor fix. Do you have a “Metal Supermarket” near you? They have what you would use. Likely there are bends in the harness bar that Sneed sends you. Carefully grind out the welds of the bar and likely you can just move it without any added metal. But if not, that would be the place to get a piece of tube.
If I remember, you got the G-lock pads. Have you bedded them in yet?
Still haven't ordered the pads. I had to skip RRR because work had me out of town for awhile. I'm trying to get all of this finished to go back to Road Atlanta on the weekend of 29-30 August.
I cut one of the practice pieces and felt pretty good about it.
However, $400 in parts to fix a $600 dollar roll bar is absolutely absurd. If I was planning on dropping $1k, I would have had a full cage made. I'm sure this whole thing is uncharacteristic of Sneed, but it is my first and likely my last purchase from him.
I just looked at the Sneed bar and moving that bar would not be fun. But you could just weld in a bar below it for a harness. It looks to just be a straight bar. That would be cheaper than those things.
Edit... Damn just saw in your pictures that you already have your harness..
But I’ll leave the following just for reference.
A cheaper and really easy route would be the QuickFit Pro, if you have not already purchased a harness. It will accept the anti submarine belt and the Pro top belts will go back to the OEM rear belt point, under the harness bar. The only thing you would need to do is install the buckle from your original seat. That would probably just take a bolt through the seat bracket. It won’t matter if your airbags are disabled as you will have the 5 or 6 belt arrangement instead. You may also need a seat belt extender to pass through the belt hole in the seat to reach the OEM buckle. This is what my friend did with his MINI with Recaro Race seats and the roll bar I now have.
HMS has been really good for me to work with and they have all the parts to do the above.
Some more progress. Heat gun, plastic trim removal tool and a little bit of goo gone made quick work of the sound deadening. I've see a lot of suggestions about dry ice, but using heat only took a about a half hour for all of it. Rust-Oleum Cobalt Blue Metallic is a really close match to Lightning Blue, so that's another win.
Thanks. The pump is electric and the flow rate is dictated by boost pressure. From what I have seen, all of the major kits (to include Aquamist) use the same US made pumps. They just put their logo on it.
Update: I called this morning to confirm that he had received my email and photos. I explained the issue and explained that I was not interested in making significant modification to something I paid nearly $600 for just to make it work. Also explained that I was not paying return shipping. He provided a shipping label twenty minutes later and as of 10:40 am the roll bar is back enroute to Sneed. I will update again when I receive my refund.
So my experience with Sneed4Speed @sneed4speed@SneedSpeed@sneedspeedusa has been bad. Do not waste your time or money on this. I ordered a 4 point roll bar on the 21st, as noted earlier, he gave me the run around with shipping “on Friday, Monday at the latest” for a few weeks. He printed a shipping label last Friday and didn’t ship it until Tuesday morning. Well, guess what? It arrived zip tied together with absolutely no protection. No plastic wrap, no cardboard no nothing. One of the floor plates was bent, one of the uprights has a gouge on the mounting point and the floor plates on both uprights are welded on crooked. To top it off, the damn hoop is crooked. The passenger side is at a much sharper angle than the driver’s side. What a waste of time and money. This experience has been a headache from start to finish. So now I’m stuck with this useless garbage.
As I see it my options are:
1. Drive it up to his shop and get my money back.
2. Get a professional to construct and install a real cage
3. Fix it myself. Since the uprights need to be mounted as close to the rear suspension pickup points as possible, this means significant modification of the upright so that it will mate with the diagonal.
Either way, it means the car is in-op for another week or two. I’ve missed one track weekend already, I’m not trying to miss August too.
This hoop is clearly skewed to the left:
Last edited by scotty_r56s; Aug 10, 2020 at 08:10 AM.
Reason: Clarity and updates.
Sneed has been good for some people and not so good for others. That doesn’t help business...
If you were around here, I know a guy, who knows the guy who did my roll bar... I know. Big help.
Here is a 4th option...
Take the bar to a professional and see if it is usable in the full cage you want to build for the car. If it is, go with option 3. As a full cage goes, if it is usable, you will save the cost of the hoop and rear braces...
You’re always helpful Eddie, I really appreciate it. I like the idea of making the bar usable, but at this point, it’s going back one way or another. He can send me a shipping label or I can deliver it in person. The hoop isn’t straight, so I’m not going to bother with it. I will be giving my money to Bethania garage and having a proper cage built. The thing that really gets me is, I called to confirm how how quickly it would ship before I placed the order. The cage is the last piece of the puzzle and I really wanted to give my kid a ride in the race car before he headed off to college. I missed that boat because “Friday, but Monday at the latest” is actually pretty vague.
I’m going to have a Guinness and forget this weekend lol.
Enjoy the Guinness! Sleep on it and things will look different in the morning...
And maybe you will figure out something for your kid...
You're totally right. I was pretty heated and needed to cool off before I engaged him about the issue. I called this morning to confirm that he had received my email and photos. I explained the issue and explained that I was not interested in making significant modification to something I paid nearly $600 for just to make it work. Also explained that I was not paying return shipping. He provided a shipping label twenty minutes later and as of 10:40 am the roll bar is back enroute to Sneed.
What is your thought now? Have someone there fabricated a roll bar now, make the car track worthy, take a ride on a track and then, later, do a cage? Or do the whole thing at once? Or haven’t thought that far ahead yet?
I'm putting out some feelers to see if I can find someone local to knock it out. The other course of action is to have Bethania Garage fab one and ship it (4-5 weeks and $875). I think I'd prefer local because the shipping really pushes it and if for some reason it doesn't fit, well I've been there done that.
