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UPDATE: The Build up of the Drift Fox 5.0 Mustang has MOVED to www.drift50.com

Before I begin to detail the roll cage installation in my 1990 Mustang GT, I just want to state that this was not a one day installation. I have really cut down this page to the basics. Building a cage from scratch requires a significant amount of time in the design phase. Careful measurements must be made of all the dimensions of your car, then you need to calculate the angles and locations of all bends. Once you finish planing out the cage you have to strip out the interior and prep the metal in the areas where you will be attaching you foot plates. Then the foot plates themselves must be contoured to match the floor of the car. This takes a significant amount of time and I did not want to misrepresent that fact due to the small number of pictures that I have in this article.

The next step is to bend up the main hoop. For this cage the main hoop is the only section that will require bending. Before bending the final hoop out of .125 DOM I practiced on a stick of ERW.

Here is a better shot of the tubing bender. Thanks to Steve McClenon at Hotrods to Hell for letting me use his bending equipment and for lending me some guidance.

Here is a shot of the main hoop after I finished my final bend. The only thing left at this point was to trim down the legs of the main hoop. Since I had already done a mock up hoop out of ERW this step was easy.

Here is a shot of the cage mocked up in the car before final welding. You can see the foot plates in this picture. I chose the location for the rear spreader bar so that the foot plates would tie the rear upper shock mounts, the wheel tubs, and the top of the rear spring perches together. The spreader bar itself works like a massive shock tower brace. I was able to feel a dramatic difference with only the rear foot plates and spreader bar in place. Yes I took it for a test lap to see how much of a difference it made, before the rest of the cage was welded in. Even if you are not considering a cage, the rear spreader bar is a good idea.