Home Motor Sport Roll Cages Step 1: Road or competition

Step 1: Road or competition use

Step 1: Road or competition use


Road use roll cages:
Road cages are made to the same exacting standards as competition cages, using the same high grade materials. However they are often not as complex, but will usually still offer substantially more protection compared to a standard vehicle with no cage at all.

Often for road use, just the rear (or ‘half’) cage is used although many people still fit a full cage as this enhances the ‘look’ of the vehicle. This can be further improved by fitting extras like door bars, competition harnesses (a harness bar may be advisable), fire extinguisher etc. Road use cages are easy to fit by a competent person as they simply bolt in place. A full fitting kit with instructions is supplied with every cage.

Motor sport (competition) roll cages:
Motor sport roll cages have to conform to the rules as outlined in the certification (hyperlink) section. The choice of material is therefore very important. At Safety Devices we mainly use high quality Cold Drawn Seamless Carbon Steel (CDS Carbon Steel) or, for some applications, T45.  CDS Carbon Steel is used to manufacture all of our standard motor sport and 4 x 4 roll cages as it conforms to FIA material specification requirements and offers good elongation and weld-ability, which are key.

Initially used for aerospace applications T45 has for a while now been used in the manufacture of roll cages by Safety Devices.

The advantage of T45 is that it has a tensile strength of approximately twice that of CDS and therefore we can manufacture the roll cage using tubing of the same diameter yet a thinner gauge (wall thickness).This means a substantial weight saving of approximately 0.5 kg per metre of tubing. However this does come at a cost, as T45 is substantially more expensive. Therefore it is only really required by competitors competing at the higher end of the motor sport spectrum.