Why are roll cages so expensive?

[Liquidity]

Perfectly serious question. I'm not a kid or a newbie, I've been in this for quite a long time but I just never really thought about running a cage until recently when a fabricator buddy of mine said he'd bend one up for me if I bought the materials and got all the dimensions. I only needed about $150 worth of DOM and then I thought maybe I'd save myself some time and get a pre-fab kit. After all, how much more could it be? Well, turns out a simple DOM 4-point without even a harness bar is around a minimum $500. That is a serious mark-up for an off-the-shelf item. What ever for? It's not like there are certifications for this, any backyard mechanic can make an FIA legal cage.

Yeah, I'm sure I'm about to ruffle the feathers of a bunch of you fabricators but my feathers are a bit ruffled as well, I'm the one that's getting ripped off here.

[snaponbob]

So, someone does something for free, and that is the yardstick by which one should measure the price of a retail item?

Experience
Equipment
Rent
Utilities
Inventory
Packaging

BTW, maybe you should Google search again. Here is the FIRST one I found for an E36. http://www.rhodesracecars.com/4-Poin...36_p_9112.html

p.s. Hope you REALLY know how to weld. The material is NOT what a cage is about. How it is installed is everything.

[Crustashio]

I don't even know where to start. Do you think cutting, notching, bending and welding are free? And the tools/shop space required required to do so? Then the time it takes to actually design (and prototype if it's off the shelf) a rollbar?

[pbonsalb]

Cheapest Autopower is about $535 and Kirk about $475. But shipping is about $150. That makes local a good option.

If you can build one yourself in your backyard that is strong and fits, do it. There are also often local people who build them and they might do it for less than Autopower or Kirk.

Let us know what you do. I bought Kirk from Bimmerworld.

[snaponbob]

Hey --- what could go wrong ---- right? http://a4.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/i...08b8cf90/l.jpg

[TheJuggernaut]

Buying pipe and bending is the easy part. In order for the cage to be worth a damn, the fitment has to be perfect. I don't mean being perfectly contoured to the body, even though a proper cage will do that. But in order for the weld to be any good, there can't be any gaps (to the base plates and pipe joints). This means every pipe = test fit, cut a little, repeat 100 times. And it all has to fit together too, so you can't do the final welding until you test fit the whole thing. And the welding itself is fun. Try welding the to the main hoop at the top for the front pipes or halo bar... you have to plan for cutting holes in the floor to drop the cage then raise it, or cut holes in the roof etc... Professionals can do this faster because it's an art and skill but you either pay for the time or for the skill. If you've got someone who can do it properly and donate his time, then you're laughing. But that's where the real difficulty and cost lies. Just make sure you do everything right, to be safe build it to spec for BMW Club racing or SCCA (follow or exceed their minimums for base plate thickness and size, tubing size and gauge, types of bends and joints permitted, number of bars etc).

For the pre-bent stuff, it's not expensive if you consider how much the tubing costs and the time to figure out all the pipes and do the bends right. Many kits like Kirk fit exceptionally well. They have templates for them but that's where their profit is, putting in the time to do it the first time to make the templates and now making money off of it. If you subtract the cost of the pipe and the time it takes to bend and cut it, multiplied by the average shop rate, their profit isn't all that exuberant and to me at least, worth the time savings (cost too, since I'd likely end up making many of the pipes more than once, and still not have it fit as well as the kit).

[hoki06]

Knowledge, experience, and labor are the major factors when it comes to roll cage cost, not material. Knowledge of proper technique for placing bars, bending experience to get the best fitment, quality welding, and the extensive amount of time to go from nothing to a full cage all cost a lot of time and time = money. If you understand the basics behind designing and fabricating a roll cage it's very easy to understand why a quality cage isn't cheap.

And since I'm seeing mention of bolt-in 4 point roll bars, please make sure you do your homework before installing one of these. You don't want to end up like this guy:





Edit: snaponbob beat me to it

[snaponbob]

That picture was a HUGE deal when it happened. If fact, the driver was INCREDIBLY lucky. He was no small guy. A lot of the energy of the wreck was spent before it flopped on its roof. The roof is resting on the racing seat that did NOT collapse. That's right ---- the seat saved his life. Almost as amazing is that he was not extracted - he crawled out.

Where or not it is a bolt up, or weld up, not done well it will fail. http://forums.nicoclub.com/why-you-s...e-t459145.html

Cutting through all the fluff ----- to the OP -- what is your life worth?

Fear mongering? Nope. After all "What could go wrong?" Answer? Well EVERYTHING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Fair]

I own a shop that does custom roll cages for race cars, but we've also installed 4-point pre-made roll bar kits on dozens of cars, and have seen LOTS of bad cages and "cage kits".



The $500 pre-bent kit the OP is talking about more than likely requires dozens of hours of work to fit, notch, weld and finish. And even then, it might have some massive design compromises made to it to keep the costs SO low. I would bet money it does. There is no such thing as a cheap roll cage kit that is also good. The only decent pre-bent + pre-notched roll cage kits I've seen are FIA homologated Rally cage kits, which tend to cost $3000, still require some "fine tuning", and of course take dozens of hours to weld to a chassis.



In the past 3 years we have made all manner of roll cages (road racing, drag racing, and land speed racing), but they are not a big money maker for us, even at $5000 starting price. Why? Two reasons... material costs for proper DOM tubing have gone up, and its $800+ just in proper tubing and plate for a full cage.



The rest is all labor. Oh brother, the hours it takes to make a proper cage! We log time on every job using a software package called MyShopAssist, even though we flat-bill roll cages. Wanna know why we flat bill cages? Because its impossible to get people to really pay for the full time & materials for what it takes to build a cage.



This cage above was a $5000 job, but it took over 70 hours to build and nearly $1000 in materials (minus paint, which was done by a paint shop and billed separately).



And there's a lot of difference in cage build quality among shops. I'm not saying we're the only shop that makes good cages, of course not, but there IS a big variance in quality. Our cages are always TIG welded with tight tube junction fit-ups. I've seen shops that charge as little as $1500 for a cage... but those tend to be exclusively for drag racers, or CrapCan race cars, or made by "non-professionals" who don't value their the worth of their own time or overhead. Many shops fall into the $2500-3500 range, but higher quality cages are $5-10K.



This cage was a nightmare - Bonneville land speed racer, built around SCTA rules, for over 225 mph. Lots of extra steel, weird "Cage within a cage" design was required, etc. That's a $7500 cage, from Vorshlag, and it was a money loser.



Virtually all of our cage jobs pay less than our hourly rate + materials (we bill at $105/hour, and we are about in the middle of the price range for local shops). Luckily most of our "cage jobs" turn into "other added work" once they see what we are capable of. This Land Speed Racer cage snowballed into a fuel cell, fire system, interior door panels, Lexan windows, parachute mount and release system, custom seat mounting, race defroster system, and more - so it eventually became profitable (at least full hourly rate + materials on the add-on stuff).



Same thing happened on this drag racer's cage, above (who wanted to keep the interior - don't ask). He wanted more work done beyond the flat billed cage (which itself wasn't full hourly rate + materials), like the seats and harnesses. Its a tight market and I hope this post is a warning for any up and coming fabricator who thinks they can make money doing just roll cage jobs. Trust me - you won't. Everyone in the industry says the same thing - roll cage jobs suck. They are fun to do, but they just don't make you much money.



Someone here already mentioned the tools required to build cages. This goes beyond just the tubing bender - but that plus a variety of tubing diameter dies can tie up thousands.



Then there's the welders (TIG for tubing joints + reinforcements, MIG for the load spreading floor plates or plinth blocks welded to the chassis), the dimple dies, the digital angle finders, tube notching set-up, band saws, welding bench, tube notch contour tool, software to help layout the bends and notches, and more.



Not to mention the overhead for the shop, adequate power, exceptional lighting, climate control, and the salary of your fabricator. If the shop you are looking at to build your cage is dark, dirty, hot and nasty - how nice will they make your roll cage? You know, that thing that your life could depend on in a crash?

Just my thoughts on the subject. Your results may vary.

[ChrisB41]

End Thread//

[snaponbob]

End Thread//

Huh?

[DrewSkii]

Huh?

He meant that what Fair had said can't be explained further. That's the reason cages are so expensive..Your very life depends on someone else's work.

[snaponbob]

Okay. As a matter of perspective, those were some amazing and very intricate roll cages that were illustrated.

[dmw16]

Not much more can be said after the epic post above. But what I think people forget is labor is what drives cost. In the $100/hr that gets billed a shop needs to cover their space, tools/equipment, electricity, any benefits (health ins, sick/vac time, etc), and pay the guy doing the work. It adds up quick.

[pbonsalb]

Probably the exhaust pipe, harbor freight flux core mig, and harbor freight pipe bender are not a good idea.

[dmw16]

Probably the exhaust pipe, harbor freight flux core mig, and harbor freight pipe bender are not a good idea.

Eh, the pipe bender is probably ok...

[Fair]

Enough people comment to me that they liked this post that I expanded on it and posted it on my forum in an "announce only" section.

http://www.vorshlag.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8384

Several other shop owners have linked to that post and said "This! This is why we have to charge what we do!"

[bmuum3]

I value my life more than the car. That's why I am not going with some cheap seat and cage. I will go with Recaro or Racetech and hopefully in the future have Piper motorsports build the cage for the car. In the end its just money. No amount of money saved can bring you back from the dead.

[surfcycle]

Not intending to be snarky, but curious what the OP does for a living? Time itself has a value and expertise increases that value. Given what my guy charged to build my cage, the experience he had vs some guy who knows how to weld, the positive comments I've gotten from more experienced racers about what a nice build it is, and the hope I never have to use it but trust it in case I do, it was a bargain.

[dmw16]

I value my life more than the car. That's why I am not going with some cheap seat and cage. I will go with Recaro or Racetech and hopefully in the future have Piper motorsports build the cage for the car. In the end its just money. No amount of money saved can bring you back from the dead.

Can't go wrong with them. Piper put the cage in my car and it's top notch work.

[jimmypet]

Fair - Pretty great post on cages for newbies.
That should be a sticky in the "build a track car" section.
To OP, you say you are not a newbie, but if you are not and didn't know all the stuff in Fair's post, you have not been paying attention.
Good cages cost money.
Cheap cages,,, well,,, they do what was pictured in the Mustang photos.

[OLD MAN]

Great answers making a What the "..." question into a GREAT thread!

[Massive Lee]

Pretty sure the OP stays in mom's basement, who does his laundry, bed spread, cooking and pays for everything. At least it is what i understand when somebody asks why people are getting paid to work...

[Pink]

Did OP's cheap ass get scared away? So much weight, responsibility, R&D, Skill not to mention shear labor involved in a cage. They should be MORE than they cost. If I paid less than $2k for a custom cage I would be nervous and pay more just to feel better.

How is an off the shelf rollbar at $425 a markup? Take what something costs to make, multiple by 5, that is your MSRP. That is a margin most would consider a viable business plan. I would assume a $425 rollbar is probably not $85 in materials and time to construct.

[EdP]

Using a major shop is not the only option for getting a top quality cage. Get referrals, check the work, do some homework. I just picked-up my Spec E46 from a freelance builder in the Northeast and am very pleased with the results.