Cage Regrets/Likes Dislikes

Im about to start making a cage for my Cherokee, and wanted some input from people who have done it before.



For those of you with a cage, what are things that you have done that you both like now, and dislike, and what are things that you would like to add?





Right now I will be adding more tie down locations, cooler holder, some sort of spare tire holder and possibly ammo can holders.



Anyone else have any input? Shoot, even things you have seen on the intardweb that you think are cool. Help a brother out!

I'll have to get some pictures when I get home, but I have 3 bars running from A pillar to B pillar to C pillar. I hate them. The one in the center is ok, but the other two are perfect for hitting your head all the time. That and they provide no triangulation from pillar to pillar, so I get alot of torsional flex.

What I did that I like, was I took 16 gauge sheet and tied the tube into the roof for the A and B pillars (which is where I learned the roof itself is glued to the "supports" that run side to side for the A and B pillars.

Another thing I don't like about the cage is, it doesn't follow the body lines on the inside well and takes up alot of space.

When I roll this puppy and have to chop it, I'll be cutting out this cage and redoing it to push outward and upward farther.

First thing I did was about 6 months before I built my cage I started saving pictures of cages. 90% we XJ cages 10% were other vehicles cages. I would save a pic if it had any little thing that I liked. Then right before we laid out my cage I got on the comp and pulled up all those images and started incorporating ideas into my cage.
When you go to lay out your cage go out and take some pictures of the Jeep straight on, from the side, from the top, and from the back. Print these on the worst quality setting your printer has and get a good Sharpie. Draw your cage, then flip the picture over and youll have a scaled down image of your tube.

With my cage I choose to go through the dash. I will say right now I love it now that it is done but I would never do it again. Personally I just hate the bulkiness of cages that wrap around the out side of the dash. And at 6'1" it is always places where it gets my knees if im not paying attention. With my cage I even sealed up the AC ducts so that the side vents still work.

I like the bends we put in all the roof supports. It gives the cage diminution, keeps your head well away from the cage, keeps the cage from looking square, and also gives a little encouragement in a roll for the XJ not to say laying roof down.

(sorry not the best pic)

I still need to tube my a pillars, finish the front exo, and put gussets on the vertical supports.

Word of caution… watch out for your evap lines and any electrical lines. I was welding in floor plates and the evap lines got a little too hot. Needless to say it’s a good thing I had plenty of heater hose and a cool smog guy.

I would never put a spare tire holder on the out side of the cage. Occasionally youll see a buggy with a tire mounted on the rear section of the cage. But in a hard roll over that will cause the piece of the cage it is mounted to to possibly crush and make the cage want to fold in. Im not sure if it is this design your talking about or not.


(if interested there are more pictures of my cage at: http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=227602243&albumId=1014581 )

I have been saving picture of cages of both XJs and other vehicles that I like or think have good ideas. I know the basic concept of how to make a cage, and hopefully I will be having a friend help me who has used a bender way more then I have.


I was asking more about oh I wish I had mounted the B pillar farther back, or added one more bar here, or refrained from putting that stupid bar there that I always hit.


I will be hopefully gutting the entire inside, dash included, but I dont know if that will be happening this time around, or if that will have to wait for a bit.

Yeah on mounting the B-pillar further back.

Exo > inner, if you plan on keeping the truck for any amount of time after wheeling it hard. I don't know what I was thinking when I just did an internal cage the first time around. I leaned it over into a tree the first time out and smashed up the roof, and the second time out I flopped it over and cracked the windshield and smashed the passenger A-pillar.

The roof halo and A-pillar bars are possibly my favorite addition. They are scratched over every inch, and it's so much nicer leaning into tube than sheetmetal. If you care about it, anyway. If I had planned it out better I would have done those from the start, and now I effectively ended up having two roll cages.

My plans for the next (final?) stage of this build include cutting out nearly all of the internal cage work, supplementing the exo, and bending a new 'X' to go behind the seats. Especially if you get into any sort of competition venues, with helmet clearance measurements etc, it's tough to have any tube inside an XJ (with a roof) and still have room to clear everything.

I'll post more as I think of it.

definately tie into both the front and rear leaf spring hangers. My front leaf spring hangers are trash now, but on Phil's cage we tied into both, and they were fine (till we cut em off) ... :wierd:

The sunken cage thing that I tried kinda worked, but it really didnt protect the body as much as I would have liked - I'd have been better off just keeping the structure of the XJ there, and taking a lot of time, and welding the cage directly to the body...

perhaps had I had more patience and welded more of the sheetmetal to the cage, it might have worked better, but the 22ga galvanized sheetmetal to .120 wall with a 220V welder with a novice weldor came out... well... novice.

I like Matt Adair's (IXNAYXJ) cage, though I wish the roof halo were a little lower on the cab.

some shots of it here:
http://www.pnwjeep.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15531&hilit=totally

ive seen 99xj4x4's cage online before. and its one of my favorite builds

Subscribed.

I'm right about at the same point you are in building the cage. Tons of pics collected and the steel waiting till we figure out exactly how to attack it.

I'm looking at a hybrid = exo-cage for the A-pillars and halo over the driver, and well triangulated internal cage for B-pillar and back. I thought about staying internal and running the A-pillars through the dash but, it's a lot of work and I still would end up with bars closer to my head than I feel comfortable with.

Thanks for making me think about attachment points in back- hauling a CO2 tank, cooler, couple of ammo cans without ghetto ratchet straps will be nice. . .

I'm currently in the process of bending mine up, but maybe what I've run into and thought about will add (somewhat) to this thread...

Starboard M said:

I was asking more about oh I wish I had mounted the B pillar farther back, or added one more bar here, or refrained from putting that stupid bar there that I always hit.

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vetteboy said:

Yeah on mounting the B-pillar further back.

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This is one thing I noticed when checking out a couple cages I've seen in pictures here out at NACFest (mainly Vette's and Andy's who both have very nice setups despite what they want to change) is the the B-Pillar hoop is well almost right where the stock B-Pillar is. After messing with it and trying to find some way to effectively do that I just couldn't get myself with enough headroom to feel comfortable (I'm 6' 2"). I'm mounting 5 points so the B-Pillar hoop can't be a mile back, but it has to be away from my head. Without grabbing the tape, I'd estimate my B-Pillar hoop is about 4.5-5" or so back from furthest rearward point of the stock one. This would still put the spreader bar right into the back of the seats so I had to kick back that as well. I can now sit in the seat and trying to get my head to hit the bar I still have about 2.5" of clearance.

3XJFamily said:

I'm looking at a hybrid = exo-cage for the A-pillars and halo over the driver, and well triangulated internal cage for B-pillar and back. I thought about staying internal and running the A-pillars through the dash but, it's a lot of work and I still would end up with bars closer to my head than I feel comfortable with.

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I thought I was going to run the A-Pillar bars through the dash as well and try and tuck it along the inside roof line the best I could, until I drove Andy's. I don't think I got all of 5 feet down the trail before I was wacking my head off his A-Pillar. :looney:

Now without a doubt I think I've come up with what I'll be bending tonight through this weekend. Exo A-Pillar, halo and rub rails with the internal B (already bent) and C. I'll jump over the roof above the B and C pillars with a piece and then drop short sections through to tie them into each other. I think I've got a neat idea to finish of my back chop that will be a mix of both Vette's and Timmay's setups.
Which brings me to the front and rear fenders. I'm still unsure how much of the front fender I'll be able to keep, but it won't be much at all. I should be well into the body line in at least the middle of the arc in the front. Once I've got the other section of the cage done I'm going play with trying to keep the fenders and integrate two tubes into them or lay out a setup similar to Jes's. My rear fender is already a straight almost 'comp cut' if you will. I believe I am going to run a bar along the edge between the fender and the tire to try and finish it off.
All in all I want to have as little exo as possible while protecting the body as best I can.

My plan is to do the popular exo for the A pillar, roof bars, and under the front fenders, while at the same time doing an internal B pillar with X and a leg down to the back.


Mine is a two door and no one rides in the back, so the placement of the B pillar hoop is fine with keeping it inline with the B pillar. Right now I will be keeping the dash(maybe), and because I am fairly tall, I dont want a bar right above my head, so I am thinking to not do any sort of internal A pillar.


Now, what the heck am I going to do with the B pillar.

There seems to be two trains of thought. One being to bend up a internal hoop and then tie it onto the roof section. Another seems to be make a halo or U for the roof, and then add legs that go down into the cabin for the B pillar. Which is better? Is it just what you want to do?
Mine will have an X with places for shoulder harnesses.

Way one:








How its tied into the halo:



And way two:

Starboard M said:

And way two:

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I see you found Coreys 1 ton ZJ. That cage is intense and possibly overbuilt, but it looks sweet in person. My hybrid cage is built this way, and I think it will be strong enough. Having a hoop inside is like building two cages IMO.

-Alex

pics of yalls tie ins/bottom plate attachments?

Ba-Riedo said:

I see you found Coreys 1 ton ZJ. That cage is intense and possibly overbuilt, but it looks sweet in person. My hybrid cage is built this way, and I think it will be strong enough. Having a hoop inside is like building two cages IMO.

-Alex

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That pic has sent me back to the drawing board for my B-Pillar. . . I've got the same sort of overhead console and that design means I don't need to hack at it, plus avoids an internal B-hoop with an exterior halo over it. . .

http://www.pnwjeep.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15950

Here is Coreys whole thread, he did some amazing work with that ZJ.

-Alex

Ba-Riedo said:

http://www.pnwjeep.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=15950

Here is Coreys whole thread, he did some amazing work with that ZJ.

-Alex

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Heres another one detailing the cage. Its an awesome cage.

http://pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=792765

I do still like the internal B-pillar hoop tied into the exo, but the location of nearly all the hoops shown still annoys me. It's right next to your head.

I think I'll be doing the B-pillar down bars outside and only having an X behind the seats, bent for clearance. This might even get recessed into the factory B-pillar to still allow for doors, who knows.

Once you start really building an exo, and really considering what bars do what...there's a minimum of bars that really need to be inside. Especially with multiple places outside to tie stuff in. I really wish I had thought about that sooner.

Here is my brothers cage in his cherokee. Its not pretty but its functional! It is also tied into the unibody at all points touching the floor.








Slow roll tested and mother approved............LOL



Still has some touches that need to be added but for a basic cage it isn't bad!!

How many of you guys keep the rear seats when you put in the cage?

Have any of you put harnesses for the rear seats?

vetteboy said:

I do still like the internal B-pillar hoop tied into the exo, but the location of nearly all the hoops shown still annoys me. It's right next to your head.

I think I'll be doing the B-pillar down bars outside and only having an X behind the seats, bent for clearance. This might even get recessed into the factory B-pillar to still allow for doors, who knows.

Once you start really building an exo, and really considering what bars do what...there's a minimum of bars that really need to be inside. Especially with multiple places outside to tie stuff in. I really wish I had thought about that sooner.

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I would rather not have a ton of tube hanging out of the body. My XJ is already to big and adding another 4'' of width by adding exo bars isnt what I want to be doing.



If you were to do your cage again, what would you do? In detail please.:wave:

i would personally not use a halo for the roof. your a pillar bars end up extremely far from the pillar and creates a very restricting view and its ten times easier to whack your head on. im also not a huge fan of the a pillar bars bent to clear the dash and then tuck back up (at the bottom). it seems like such a weak point in the cage. a 5 degree bend reduces a tubes strength like 60%