DanDurusky wrote:
Nice!
What are the pros/cons of nascar bars vs. the gussetted X bars i've been seeing a lot of?
My own opinion:
NASCAR bars first of all give the driver more room in the car. They also put something hard way far outboard to keep hard stuff (like other cars) from penetrating the driver compartment.
I believe that SCCA *requires* NASCAR bars on Improved Touring cars on the driver side, and recently made the option of doing them on the passenger side available.
They have their downsides. You have to gut the door and remove the window glass. This can be a problem for cars being towed in the rain on an open trailer, or cars that are stored outside. Depending on the design od the car, you may have to rework the interior door pull.
Detractors of NASCAR door bars seem to claim, with some amount of legitimacy, that they want a certain amout of "crush zone" in the sides of the car before a side impact gets to the cage. The reasoning I've heard is two fold. One is to lessen the "harshness" of the initial impact. The second I find a little more suspect. Some folks have told me that if the first thing that gets hit is the cage, since the cage is built so strong, anything that touches the cage hard enough to damage the door bars is going to carry that damage elsewhere in the cage, possibly doing more harm than one thinks to the chassis of the car.
There are also some classes, I'm pretty sure, that disallow NASCAR bars. Showroom stock was this way for years but I think that's been changed.
And, of course, some folks want to keep the window glass.
Every race car I've owned (one) or rented (two) had NASCAR ars.
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