Just like with active safety, your ride is useless if its passive safety is not up to par. Passive safety is you ride’s ability to protect you during an accident. This includes your sport compact’s ability to direct the force of the impact way from you, while keeping its structural integrity in order to avoid harming you.

You know that a roll bar is a popular modification for import cars. There are some things you should know about your sport compact and roll bar material, though.

For safety, roll bars must be padded every place your body can come into contact with it. When you wear you helmet on the track, use high-density padding. For driving on the street loose-density padding. You can secure the padding with zip ties. Make sure they are facing away from you. Do not wrap the padding in vinyl or any other plastic material because they can release fumes or smoke if your car catches fire! That would definitely be a double whammy!

Let’s get to the basics: Roll bars are usually made of either DOM steel or Chromoly steel. DOM stands for Drawn Over Mandrel. A mandrel is a metal rod or bar around which metal may be shaped. The mandrel allows roll bars to be bent into smooth curves without collapsing. DOM steel is strong, less expensive, easier to find, and easier to weld. Chromoly is lighter and stronger. It’s smaller, to maximize the space of you interior.

Tags: active safety, Chromoly steel, DOM steel, passive safety, roll bar, sport compact
Filed under: Cars