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Pads

You cannot just weld or bolt a roll bar tube directly to the car's floorpan. If the car rolled over, it would punch right through the floor of the car and not be very useful. You are supposed to put the ends of roll bar tubes onto pads. Roll Bar Main shows all the rules I needed to follow. A quick summary is I needed 22 inches of perimeter (3x8 pads would have 22 inches of perimeter), they needed to be 1/4 inch thick, and I needed a pad above and below the floorpan. I also needed to bolt the cage in through the pads.

The "bed of nails" was used to measure the contour of the car's door sill.
   

Here is a 1/4x3x8 inch piece of mild steel. It is a little bit hard to see, but you can see I scored the end of the slab 1/2 way through with my circular saw with a steel cutting wheel in it.
 

The metal was put in a vice and bent at the score to the appropriate angle. 


The angle of the bend was regularly checked with the bed-of-nails.
 

Other cuts and bends were made to follow the contour of the car. The scca rules encourage some vertical components to the pads.
   

All the scores and bends were filled in with the TIG welder.
         
 

This shows where the door sill pads will go. I was happy they fit the contour of the car so well. The location is just behind the front seats by the door.
 

Underneath these pads, on the bottom side of the car, pads were needed, too. The floor of the car is sandwiched between the pads.
     
The contour of the car is a bit different underneath, so these pads are different from the topside pads.

Group photos of all the pads. The shinier areas were due to being cleaned up with a die grinder, for a fresh clean surface for welding the tubes to the pads.
   

The pads that went on the rear fenderwells had an unusual feature. The right side fenderwell was flat, but the left side one was curved. The right side (relative to sitting in the driver's seat) top pad needed the corners notched a bit for clearance with the seat belt anchor and seatback latch. These are 1/4x3x8 inch pieces.
 

To curve the left side pads, I used a ring roller I built. The bed-of-nails was used to check when the curvature was correct. Most 4th gen Camaro roll bar installations put the pads further back where the metal is flat, and wouldn't need this step.
       

Here is a test fit for the rear fenderwell pads. These are the rear fender wells beside the rear seatback. Note the left side one is slightly curved and the right side one is flat.
 

Keywords: Camaro, Firebird, LT1, LS1, autocross, road racing, SCCA, NHRA, drag racing, safety, roll bar, welding, racing rules

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