How-To: installing Autopower 60952 bolt-in roll bar (WITH PICTURES)
Dec 19, 2012, 12:15 PM
#1
How-To: installing Autopower 60952 bolt-in roll bar (WITH PICTURES)
Way back in 2005, vtluu already documented installing the Autopower "race" bolt-in roll bar for the Evo 8/9:
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/ev...r-install.html
- but there are no pictures anymore, so I decided to do my own how-to thread.
In case the hosting of the pictures below on postimage.org dies, you should be able to see all of these pictures (as well as all the pictures I took documenting how I installed my six-point G-Force harness) by going to my Photobucket album directly:
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Hsun...?sort=3&page=4
The Autopower Race bolt-in roll bar (#60952 for the Evo 8/9 application) is the only easy-to-install roll bar that I know of that you can just order up and install in your garage without having to take your car anywhere or do any welding. It's also approved by SCCA and NASA for their entry-level forms of track driving—HPDE and Time Trials (it's legal for autocross events too). That being said, a bolt-in cage is not anywhere as robust as a welded-in cage, because the feet on this bolt-in cage are relatively small and only attach to the floor, as opposed to having feet that wrap up and attach to the vertical areas of interior, which dramatically increases the roll bar feet's resistance to punching through the thin sheet metal of the body in case of a rollover accident. The advantage of a bolt-in cage is of course the ease of installation, and the ability to remove or resell the cage later.
To minimize the chance of the Autopower roll bar feet from punching through the thin sheet metal of the Evo's floorboards, consider adding these DIY reinforcement plates... how-to thread courtesy of xtnct: https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/mo...ng-plates.html
First off, just for the record, my 60952 roll bar (the version for Evo 8/9 WITHOUT a sunroof) weighed 61.4 pounds including all hardware and all four mounting area backing plates. It came from the factory painted black (you can order it unpainted if you want; it supposedly saves some time on delivery but it's the same price).
To prepare for installing it:
* Remove rear seat back.
* Move both front seats (if you have OEM seats) as far forward as they'll go in the sliders, then tilt the seatbacks are far forward as they'll go.
* Take the two Phillips screws out of the bottom of the center console cubby and remove it. You need to pull upwards on the front of the console to release the clips from the trim around the shifter. Optional: remove the threshhold trim for the passenger rear door (or cover it with a thick towel to protect it).
Start putting the roll bar in via the passenger side rear door. Don't try this without a friend. It's too heavy and awkward to maneuver into place by yourself and not scratch up the car.
Even with a friend, I suggest wrapping up the stub on the passenger side for the rear support bar that points backwards to minimize damage to your car if you accidentally run it into the body of the car, just outside the door jamb. I wrapped it with a dead bicycle inner tube to cover/pad the sharp nasty edge of that slip-fit tube; you could also use a few layers of thick cardboard and tape.
To get the passenger-side base of the rollbar hoop into the car, you must maneuver the driver side base of the rollbar hoop into the area previously occupied by the back half of the center console you just removed, between the front seats, just above the E-brake cables.
It would definitely be easier to remove the driver's seat entirely; I just wanted to see if it was possible to install the roll bar hoop with both front seats installed. It is, but the clearance between the passenger-side base of the main hoop to the inside of the passenger-side rear door's plastic door panel is very tight as you're sneaking it in the final couple inches. Be careful not to scratch the door panel with the passenger side foot of the roll bar, or either remove the driver's seat or the passenger rear door panel to give yourself considerably more clearance to work.
NOTE: The two rear bars aren't labeled left and right (on my Autopower 60952, anyway) but they ARE different. To save yourself some potential headscratching or wasted time/effort installing them on the wrong sides, note that when you look at the baseplates to the rear wheelwells, the long side of the rectangular plate that has TWO bolt holes along it goes towards the center of the car.
Watch for that thin wire along the inside of the rear door openings when you're trying to position the assembled roll bar back where it needs to sit.
Once you've got the roll bar properly test-fitted to the car, I recommend you follow this order of steps:
* Mark and drill the holes for the rear mounting points to the rear wheel wells (with the rear legs properly bolted to the main hoop)
* Bolt the roll bar down in place with the rear mounting points
* Mark the positions of the holes in the floor for the main hoop feet while the roll bar is bolted in by the rear points
* Remove the entire roll bar to perform the drilling of the holes and cutting of the carpet for the feet for the main hoop
* Reinstall the roll bar for the final installation
Pics:
Here's the included hardware (I painted the reinforcement plates with spraypaint for rust resistance) and the "instructions," which of course are generic and no help in terms of figuring out how to get the roll bar into the car. Autopower included one extra nut (I'm assuming intentionally), a nice touch:
Test fitting it in the car, on top of the carpet:
The passenger side rear bar's foot:
The driver side rear bar's foot:
Here's where the feet for the main hoop sit:
You can see that with the bar just sitting on top of the OEM carpet, the bar ends up pressed really tight against the roof liner... as you'll see later in the last pic, the bar drop down a good 1/4" to 3/8" when you mount the bar directly to the floor:
Clearance to the rear door panels is about perfect... you can still access the interior door handle with the bar installed. Glad someone at Autopower thought about that.
Here's where the holes get drilled through the rear wheelwell on the passenger side:
And on the driver's side (here you can see that I trimmed the noise mat out from under the foot... I did that on both sides of course):
Where the mounting bolts come through underneath:
And with the backing plate, double-nutted as per the instructions (using double nuts or split washers to prevent loosening of the nuts is specified in most racing rulebooks regarding bolt-in bars and cages). I also used Loctite blue to be extra sure:
Then I spraypainted the whole damn thing flat black after the nuts were properly torqued after the final installation for an extra layer of corrosion protection:
I also painted the bolts and nuts that secure the rear support bars to the main hoop black so they blended in better:
Okay, on to mounting the feet for the main hoop. I just used cheap scratch awls (the one with the blue handle is from Harbor Freight) and a framing hammer to mark/punch through the floorboard where the bolts needed to go... the sheet metal is scary thin/weak:
From under the car:
Once you've marked the three holes per side for the front feet (with the rest of the bar properly assembled and bolted down to the rear wheel wells), take the entire bar out of the car so you have room to work.
Inside, under the carpet (driver's side):
Passenger side (note they don't line up the same compared to the patterns in the floor sheetmetal):
Testing with the backing plate and bolts from the inside, after the holes are drilled, to make sure they line up (I had to enlarge/"adjust" one of them):
I marked the holes I'd punched through the carpet with the scratch awl with a black Sharpie marker, then added a fourth dot to make a rectangle. The long side is about 4 1/2". These will serve as the "corners" of the X I cut in the carpet for the roll bar's front feet. A sharp utility knife and a stainless steel ruler works great for making these cuts.
After X-ing the carpet, I used scissors to cut the gray matting under the plastic-backed carpet (you can't cut that stuff cleanly with the utility knife):
Ready to bolt the roll bar in:
All right, now to put the bar back in the car for final install. You want to start by putting the front feet of the roll bar in front of the X-ed area in the carpet, and then carefully slide it back (towards the rear of the car) to complete your installation.
In order to keep the front triangular flap of the carpet from ending up trapped under the mounting foot, you need to fold it back and stick it under the foot as you slide the entire roll bar assembly into place:
Feet in place, bolted down:
And here's some pics of the rollbar in my Evo with the install finished:
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/ev...r-install.html
- but there are no pictures anymore, so I decided to do my own how-to thread.
In case the hosting of the pictures below on postimage.org dies, you should be able to see all of these pictures (as well as all the pictures I took documenting how I installed my six-point G-Force harness) by going to my Photobucket album directly:
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Hsun...?sort=3&page=4
The Autopower Race bolt-in roll bar (#60952 for the Evo 8/9 application) is the only easy-to-install roll bar that I know of that you can just order up and install in your garage without having to take your car anywhere or do any welding. It's also approved by SCCA and NASA for their entry-level forms of track driving—HPDE and Time Trials (it's legal for autocross events too). That being said, a bolt-in cage is not anywhere as robust as a welded-in cage, because the feet on this bolt-in cage are relatively small and only attach to the floor, as opposed to having feet that wrap up and attach to the vertical areas of interior, which dramatically increases the roll bar feet's resistance to punching through the thin sheet metal of the body in case of a rollover accident. The advantage of a bolt-in cage is of course the ease of installation, and the ability to remove or resell the cage later.
To minimize the chance of the Autopower roll bar feet from punching through the thin sheet metal of the Evo's floorboards, consider adding these DIY reinforcement plates... how-to thread courtesy of xtnct: https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/mo...ng-plates.html
First off, just for the record, my 60952 roll bar (the version for Evo 8/9 WITHOUT a sunroof) weighed 61.4 pounds including all hardware and all four mounting area backing plates. It came from the factory painted black (you can order it unpainted if you want; it supposedly saves some time on delivery but it's the same price).
To prepare for installing it:
* Remove rear seat back.
* Move both front seats (if you have OEM seats) as far forward as they'll go in the sliders, then tilt the seatbacks are far forward as they'll go.
* Take the two Phillips screws out of the bottom of the center console cubby and remove it. You need to pull upwards on the front of the console to release the clips from the trim around the shifter. Optional: remove the threshhold trim for the passenger rear door (or cover it with a thick towel to protect it).
Start putting the roll bar in via the passenger side rear door. Don't try this without a friend. It's too heavy and awkward to maneuver into place by yourself and not scratch up the car.
Even with a friend, I suggest wrapping up the stub on the passenger side for the rear support bar that points backwards to minimize damage to your car if you accidentally run it into the body of the car, just outside the door jamb. I wrapped it with a dead bicycle inner tube to cover/pad the sharp nasty edge of that slip-fit tube; you could also use a few layers of thick cardboard and tape.
To get the passenger-side base of the rollbar hoop into the car, you must maneuver the driver side base of the rollbar hoop into the area previously occupied by the back half of the center console you just removed, between the front seats, just above the E-brake cables.
It would definitely be easier to remove the driver's seat entirely; I just wanted to see if it was possible to install the roll bar hoop with both front seats installed. It is, but the clearance between the passenger-side base of the main hoop to the inside of the passenger-side rear door's plastic door panel is very tight as you're sneaking it in the final couple inches. Be careful not to scratch the door panel with the passenger side foot of the roll bar, or either remove the driver's seat or the passenger rear door panel to give yourself considerably more clearance to work.
NOTE: The two rear bars aren't labeled left and right (on my Autopower 60952, anyway) but they ARE different. To save yourself some potential headscratching or wasted time/effort installing them on the wrong sides, note that when you look at the baseplates to the rear wheelwells, the long side of the rectangular plate that has TWO bolt holes along it goes towards the center of the car.
Watch for that thin wire along the inside of the rear door openings when you're trying to position the assembled roll bar back where it needs to sit.
Once you've got the roll bar properly test-fitted to the car, I recommend you follow this order of steps:
* Mark and drill the holes for the rear mounting points to the rear wheel wells (with the rear legs properly bolted to the main hoop)
* Bolt the roll bar down in place with the rear mounting points
* Mark the positions of the holes in the floor for the main hoop feet while the roll bar is bolted in by the rear points
* Remove the entire roll bar to perform the drilling of the holes and cutting of the carpet for the feet for the main hoop
* Reinstall the roll bar for the final installation
Pics:
Here's the included hardware (I painted the reinforcement plates with spraypaint for rust resistance) and the "instructions," which of course are generic and no help in terms of figuring out how to get the roll bar into the car. Autopower included one extra nut (I'm assuming intentionally), a nice touch:
Test fitting it in the car, on top of the carpet:
The passenger side rear bar's foot:
The driver side rear bar's foot:
Here's where the feet for the main hoop sit:
You can see that with the bar just sitting on top of the OEM carpet, the bar ends up pressed really tight against the roof liner... as you'll see later in the last pic, the bar drop down a good 1/4" to 3/8" when you mount the bar directly to the floor:
Clearance to the rear door panels is about perfect... you can still access the interior door handle with the bar installed. Glad someone at Autopower thought about that.
Here's where the holes get drilled through the rear wheelwell on the passenger side:
And on the driver's side (here you can see that I trimmed the noise mat out from under the foot... I did that on both sides of course):
Where the mounting bolts come through underneath:
And with the backing plate, double-nutted as per the instructions (using double nuts or split washers to prevent loosening of the nuts is specified in most racing rulebooks regarding bolt-in bars and cages). I also used Loctite blue to be extra sure:
Then I spraypainted the whole damn thing flat black after the nuts were properly torqued after the final installation for an extra layer of corrosion protection:
I also painted the bolts and nuts that secure the rear support bars to the main hoop black so they blended in better:
Okay, on to mounting the feet for the main hoop. I just used cheap scratch awls (the one with the blue handle is from Harbor Freight) and a framing hammer to mark/punch through the floorboard where the bolts needed to go... the sheet metal is scary thin/weak:
From under the car:
Once you've marked the three holes per side for the front feet (with the rest of the bar properly assembled and bolted down to the rear wheel wells), take the entire bar out of the car so you have room to work.
Inside, under the carpet (driver's side):
Passenger side (note they don't line up the same compared to the patterns in the floor sheetmetal):
Testing with the backing plate and bolts from the inside, after the holes are drilled, to make sure they line up (I had to enlarge/"adjust" one of them):
I marked the holes I'd punched through the carpet with the scratch awl with a black Sharpie marker, then added a fourth dot to make a rectangle. The long side is about 4 1/2". These will serve as the "corners" of the X I cut in the carpet for the roll bar's front feet. A sharp utility knife and a stainless steel ruler works great for making these cuts.
After X-ing the carpet, I used scissors to cut the gray matting under the plastic-backed carpet (you can't cut that stuff cleanly with the utility knife):
Ready to bolt the roll bar in:
All right, now to put the bar back in the car for final install. You want to start by putting the front feet of the roll bar in front of the X-ed area in the carpet, and then carefully slide it back (towards the rear of the car) to complete your installation.
In order to keep the front triangular flap of the carpet from ending up trapped under the mounting foot, you need to fold it back and stick it under the foot as you slide the entire roll bar assembly into place:
Feet in place, bolted down:
And here's some pics of the rollbar in my Evo with the install finished:
Last edited by EGbeater; Jan 31, 2014 at 02:34 PM.
Dec 26, 2012, 05:15 PM
#11
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Join Date: Apr 2009
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how far are those bolts sticking down into the wheel well? When ive installed these roll bars in the past (on mine and friends cars) i would reverse those bolts to prevent shredding the tire if you really compressed the suspension.
This was on a different car though.
This was on a different car though.
Dec 27, 2012, 01:00 PM
#13
Not without an additional forward-facing driver side bar... Section 20.18, subsection 4:10:
Sidebar must be included on driver’s side and must pass the driver at a point midway between the shoulder and elbow. Swing-out sidebar permitted.
http://www.nhra.com/UserFiles/file/G...egulations.pdf
