Just wanted to get some info out to you guys about roll cages, originally posted on M3forum. Weldless cage if in case some of you guys might consider.
Like most of my favorite modifications on my car a thread by Mikymu inspired me and got my mind rolling. It was November or something and Mike made a post about roll bars. He was interested in going Kirk or AutoPower. I had considered both, since 2 good friends of mine, Tonggi and NYBeater, were running Kirk bars. I liked the way they looked but after Mvez chimed in on the Raven Roll Bar, I was sold. A bolt in roll bar, unless your welding there are no compromises, that would retain the rear seats (or what part of the seats you wanted to keep). I needed it.
I called John Dimoff of Raven performance (www.ravenperformance.com) in early January of 2009 and told him that me and my friend (lightwerkz) were interested in purchasing one of their bolt in roll bars. He told me that he had one that was 90% made and another one he could make in about 1 month. He said he had an issue w/shipping to the US, but I told him that would be fine since me and Lightwerkz would be driving up to Toronto to pick them up (driving 8 hrs and staying one night is cheaper than having 2 roll bars shipped across our border to the north). I gave him 6 weeks and left a 50% deposit and in 6 weeks, we drove up and received the bars.
The Raven shop is awesome. As you walk in there is a Hartge M3 motor. Which is nuts
Then you are greeted by an E92 M3 that is being gutted and having a true weld in roll cage put in.
Then there is a Phoenix Yellow M3 that has a full cage welded in it already - absolutely nuts
Our bolt in roll bars were assembled by Steve @ Raven, who is a master at what he does. They utilize this jig in order to get the bars perfect each time - so there is no fear of a bar that will require user modification
To make this:
We actually borrowed Lightwerkz' Honda Pilot to transport the two bars. This is how we set them up
As some of you may read, Lightwerkz color matched his roll bar to his car, Titanium Silver. I was going to go w/Flat black or something along those lines, but thats so boring. Plus I trust Lightwerkz and their painting skills, so I went ahead with colour matching my bar to the car - Silver Grey (Paint Code A08). It wasn't going to be like Mikymu's powdercoated GT3 bar, which is not a great match, sadly. I needed to make sure it was great work - luckily the place where we got the paint was a good place.
The process of installing this roll bar is quite simple. You remove the front seats, which gave me time to put on my new Recaro sliders and Speedware Floor mounts. Once the rear seats are removed, remove the center console and shifter gate if you are anal like me and want to keep things ultra fresh. Once those are removed, remove the lower seat cushion and identify the 2 unused seat belt torx bolts on the right and left and undo them. They also have brackets hovering over them. Undo those and bolt down the bottom portion of the raven roll bar. It will look like this
View of the T50 Torx