Someone on another motorsports forum asked "Why do roll cages cost so much money". This was my response...
Vorshlag builds custom roll cages for many types of race cars. We've also installed pre-made 4-point roll bar kits on dozens of cars, and in the past ten years we have seen LOTS of bad cages and "cage kits". We have even CUT roll cages out of cars that were unsafe (with the customer's consent).
There are cheap $500 pre-bent cage kits out there that people think they can buy and "just find somebody to weld in my car". Even if, in the highly unlikely scenario, this "cage kit" used the right materials and had an exceptional design, it still requires dozens of hours of work to fit, notch, weld and finish. But more than likely it will have some massive design compromises made to it to keep the costs SO low on a "cage kit" where the materials alone should cost more than that. There are missing tubes, the materials are wrong, and the tubes have HUGE gaps to the chassis - putting the cage dangerously close to the driver.
We can even scratch-build a tube framed car, if that meets your needs...
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.
Over the past several years we have built all manner of roll cages (road racing, drag racing, and land speed racing), but these jobs are not a money maker for us, even at the $6000 starting price for roll cages at our shop. Why? Two reasons. First is material costs - seamless DOM tubing prices have gone up, so it is $800+ just in proper tubing and plate for a full cage.
The rest is all labor. We tend to spend 65-75 hours to make a properly designed, well built, TIG welded, and class certified roll cage for road racing. 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 even for "time & materials" for what it takes to build a proper cage.
This cage above was a $6000 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). The tubes fit tight to the chassis, are routed away from the driver, and the tube fit-up is second to none. It was built around specific NASA classing rules and their CCR guidelines and had photos sent to tech inspectors for approval during the build. To cover materials and our shop rate for the time logged it would need to have an $8000 price tag.
WHAT IS YOUR SAFETY WORTH TO YOU?
There's a wide range of quality among race shops building roll cages. I'm not saying that Vorshlag is 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 $2000 for a "roll cage", but those tend to be exclusively for drag racers or CrapCan race cars, or made by "non-professionals" who don't value the worth of their own time or overhead.
At these bargain prices you are going to have a cage with some of these issues: the tubing layout doesn't fit tight to the chassis, intrudes into the driver's personal space, has tubes landing in the wrong places, is missing critical load paths, doesn't have proper gussets, violates some safety standard or rule, has MIG welds and/or gross tubing fit tolerances "made up with weld", or all of the above. I could show pictures that would curl your hair, but to protect our customers' pride we don't share the "wall of shame" level of pictures of terrible cage work we've seen roll into our shop. We just quietly cut them out and throw away the evidence...
Many shops build cages that fall into the $2500-3500 range, and when we see these we can always point out corners that were cut to get there. Again - gaps between the cage tubes and the A-pillar or roof of 6+ inches is not uncommon, but higher quality roll cages tend to be very close or even touching the chassis (for maximum driver room); see above left. Sometimes that price is the upper limit for a particular customer (crap can racers tend to have budgets in this range) but we cannot build a cage for that. Too many compromises.
A roll cage should be custom built around the driver, their seat, and their safety gear
These "mid level" cages tend to be 100% MIG-welded (which is OK, just not preferred), but on those we tend to see tube notch fit-up gaps that approach .100" to .250" or more. Higher quality cages are TIG welded at all joints (exception: we MIG weld chassis mounting load spreader plates) with notch fit-up tighter than a piece of paper (.005" or less. See above right). The problem is, a high quality roll cage for road race use is a $6-10K job. Some drag racing cages can approach $15K for a certified cage (SFI 25.5C cages, for example).
This cage above was a bit of a nightmare - Bonneville land speed racer, built around SCTA rules, built to be certified for over 225 mph. Lots of extra tubing, unusual "cage within a cage" design requirements, etc. That was a $7500 cage built by our crew here Vorshlag, and even at that price we made less than a basic "time and materials" job. We would flat bill that at closer to $9000 today.
Virtually all of our cage jobs pay less than our hourly rate + materials (we bill at $115/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 more work: 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 Subaru drag racer's cage, above (who wanted to keep the interior, which made everything much more difficult). Again, we lucked out and he wanted more work done beyond the flat billed cage work (which itself wasn't full hourly rate + materials), like the seats and harnesses. This Subaru drag race cage would be billed at $7500 today.
The aftermarket fabrication market is tight and competition is fierce, so 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 this industry that has built cages in the past says the same thing - roll cage jobs are a giant time suck. Sure, they are fun to do and the results can be very satisfying, but they just don't make you much money. Clutch jobs and basic wrenching pay better.
Don't forget the tools required to properly build roll cages. This goes beyond just the tubing bender - but the bender, a stand, and a good selection of tubing diameter dies (which cost $350-500 each) can tie up thousands of dollars.
Then there's the welders (TIG for tubing joints + reinforcements, MIG for the load spreading floor plates or plinth blocks welded to the chassis. We have $20,000 in TIG + MIG welders alone in our shop! Then there's the the dimple dies for gussets and chassis plates, shear & brake for sheet metal bits, the digital angle finders, a rigid tube notching set-up, various band saws, a good welding bench, tube notch contour tool, software to help layout the bends and notches, and more. To start from scratch and do cages to the level we do would require $40K in tooling and fixtures alone. Can your buddy with a $200 Harbor Freight MIG welder make your cage for less? Sure, but its going to show. "You get what you pay for"
Not to mention the overhead for the shop, adequate power, exceptional lighting, climate control, and the salary of your SKILLED and EXPERIENCED fabricators. If the shop you are looking at to build your cage is dark, dirty, hot and nasty - how nice can they make your roll cage? You know, that thing that your life could depend on in a crash?
So while some folks might be turned off by our $6000 starting price, know that this doesn't even guarantee that we make any profit on the cage work - but that's just part of this business. We won't compromise safety or quality for cost on a job this critical, but others might.
If these images above of the roll cage work we can do look like something you want or need, give us a call at 972-422-7170 or shoot us an email at services@vorshlag.com. We will need to know what type of car you have, what series/class it is being built for, what type of seat you want to use, and even your body size. Once we see the car in person we can verify our estimate, and you will need to be here for a "fitting" during the initial cage layout steps. Hopefully we can work to build the best cage that fits you, your chassis, and your racing class.
Thanks!
Vorshlag builds custom roll cages for many types of race cars. We've also installed pre-made 4-point roll bar kits on dozens of cars, and in the past ten years we have seen LOTS of bad cages and "cage kits". We have even CUT roll cages out of cars that were unsafe (with the customer's consent).
There are cheap $500 pre-bent cage kits out there that people think they can buy and "just find somebody to weld in my car". Even if, in the highly unlikely scenario, this "cage kit" used the right materials and had an exceptional design, it still requires dozens of hours of work to fit, notch, weld and finish. But more than likely it will have some massive design compromises made to it to keep the costs SO low on a "cage kit" where the materials alone should cost more than that. There are missing tubes, the materials are wrong, and the tubes have HUGE gaps to the chassis - putting the cage dangerously close to the driver.
We can even scratch-build a tube framed car, if that meets your needs...
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.
Over the past several years we have built all manner of roll cages (road racing, drag racing, and land speed racing), but these jobs are not a money maker for us, even at the $6000 starting price for roll cages at our shop. Why? Two reasons. First is material costs - seamless DOM tubing prices have gone up, so it is $800+ just in proper tubing and plate for a full cage.
The rest is all labor. We tend to spend 65-75 hours to make a properly designed, well built, TIG welded, and class certified roll cage for road racing. 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 even for "time & materials" for what it takes to build a proper cage.
This cage above was a $6000 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). The tubes fit tight to the chassis, are routed away from the driver, and the tube fit-up is second to none. It was built around specific NASA classing rules and their CCR guidelines and had photos sent to tech inspectors for approval during the build. To cover materials and our shop rate for the time logged it would need to have an $8000 price tag.
WHAT IS YOUR SAFETY WORTH TO YOU?
There's a wide range of quality among race shops building roll cages. I'm not saying that Vorshlag is 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 $2000 for a "roll cage", but those tend to be exclusively for drag racers or CrapCan race cars, or made by "non-professionals" who don't value the worth of their own time or overhead.
At these bargain prices you are going to have a cage with some of these issues: the tubing layout doesn't fit tight to the chassis, intrudes into the driver's personal space, has tubes landing in the wrong places, is missing critical load paths, doesn't have proper gussets, violates some safety standard or rule, has MIG welds and/or gross tubing fit tolerances "made up with weld", or all of the above. I could show pictures that would curl your hair, but to protect our customers' pride we don't share the "wall of shame" level of pictures of terrible cage work we've seen roll into our shop. We just quietly cut them out and throw away the evidence...
Many shops build cages that fall into the $2500-3500 range, and when we see these we can always point out corners that were cut to get there. Again - gaps between the cage tubes and the A-pillar or roof of 6+ inches is not uncommon, but higher quality roll cages tend to be very close or even touching the chassis (for maximum driver room); see above left. Sometimes that price is the upper limit for a particular customer (crap can racers tend to have budgets in this range) but we cannot build a cage for that. Too many compromises.
A roll cage should be custom built around the driver, their seat, and their safety gear
These "mid level" cages tend to be 100% MIG-welded (which is OK, just not preferred), but on those we tend to see tube notch fit-up gaps that approach .100" to .250" or more. Higher quality cages are TIG welded at all joints (exception: we MIG weld chassis mounting load spreader plates) with notch fit-up tighter than a piece of paper (.005" or less. See above right). The problem is, a high quality roll cage for road race use is a $6-10K job. Some drag racing cages can approach $15K for a certified cage (SFI 25.5C cages, for example).
This cage above was a bit of a nightmare - Bonneville land speed racer, built around SCTA rules, built to be certified for over 225 mph. Lots of extra tubing, unusual "cage within a cage" design requirements, etc. That was a $7500 cage built by our crew here Vorshlag, and even at that price we made less than a basic "time and materials" job. We would flat bill that at closer to $9000 today.
Virtually all of our cage jobs pay less than our hourly rate + materials (we bill at $115/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 more work: 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 Subaru drag racer's cage, above (who wanted to keep the interior, which made everything much more difficult). Again, we lucked out and he wanted more work done beyond the flat billed cage work (which itself wasn't full hourly rate + materials), like the seats and harnesses. This Subaru drag race cage would be billed at $7500 today.
The aftermarket fabrication market is tight and competition is fierce, so 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 this industry that has built cages in the past says the same thing - roll cage jobs are a giant time suck. Sure, they are fun to do and the results can be very satisfying, but they just don't make you much money. Clutch jobs and basic wrenching pay better.
Don't forget the tools required to properly build roll cages. This goes beyond just the tubing bender - but the bender, a stand, and a good selection of tubing diameter dies (which cost $350-500 each) can tie up thousands of dollars.
Then there's the welders (TIG for tubing joints + reinforcements, MIG for the load spreading floor plates or plinth blocks welded to the chassis. We have $20,000 in TIG + MIG welders alone in our shop! Then there's the the dimple dies for gussets and chassis plates, shear & brake for sheet metal bits, the digital angle finders, a rigid tube notching set-up, various band saws, a good welding bench, tube notch contour tool, software to help layout the bends and notches, and more. To start from scratch and do cages to the level we do would require $40K in tooling and fixtures alone. Can your buddy with a $200 Harbor Freight MIG welder make your cage for less? Sure, but its going to show. "You get what you pay for"
Not to mention the overhead for the shop, adequate power, exceptional lighting, climate control, and the salary of your SKILLED and EXPERIENCED fabricators. If the shop you are looking at to build your cage is dark, dirty, hot and nasty - how nice can they make your roll cage? You know, that thing that your life could depend on in a crash?
So while some folks might be turned off by our $6000 starting price, know that this doesn't even guarantee that we make any profit on the cage work - but that's just part of this business. We won't compromise safety or quality for cost on a job this critical, but others might.
If these images above of the roll cage work we can do look like something you want or need, give us a call at 972-422-7170 or shoot us an email at services@vorshlag.com. We will need to know what type of car you have, what series/class it is being built for, what type of seat you want to use, and even your body size. Once we see the car in person we can verify our estimate, and you will need to be here for a "fitting" during the initial cage layout steps. Hopefully we can work to build the best cage that fits you, your chassis, and your racing class.
Thanks!
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