With One Lap 2022 in the books, the urgency to get things done has lessened a good bit. Like any good project car, there still are things to be done. There always will be…
The last (or currently last) major component needed was a roll bar. It isn’t required by OLOA, but it is an important safety component. This car is a “mullet car” (yep, totally made that up) it’s business in the front and party in the back. Meaning, most of the interior is still in the front of the car, the back has been mostly gutted. Wanting to keep the car practical for street driving, means that a full cage wasn’t in the plan. That left a few options: something pre-fabbed, a bolt-in bar, or a completely custom bar.
Being tall I have the seat all the way back on the sliders while driving. That doesn’t leave much/any room behind the factory seat for a bar, so it was looking like something custom was going to be the answer. Before committing I wanted to get the new seat installed and see what the actual spacing was going to be behind the seat.
I reached out to Mark Stewart at Kirk Racing and talked through the options. I settled on the bolt-in bar he offered. There ended up being about 2″ of space behind the driver seat when in the full back position. That’s a enough space for the bar and the bolt-in is a considerable cost saving over a full custom bar.
I dropped the Mini off last week. Mark had the bar built, painted and installed in a couple days. It actually took me longer to go pick up the car than it did for him to install it. The only negative with the bolt-in bar is that where it mounts behind the seats requires removing the factory seat belt anchor. So, without some modifications, the factory 3-point belts can’t be used. For the driver’s side, I already have the 5-point harness to install. Just need to decide what to do with the passenger side now.