Project: 1995 Miata

[Jake]

Because Rollbar!

After three years and countless "I will, soon!" empty promises to Maeng and others, I finally got a rollbar installed. Big thanks to the Zarellas for their help in the install process.

I drove down to Strasburg yesterday morning (had the bar shipped to Joe's work so I didn't have to transport it) and we started tearing the car apart. It's really not a hard install process, you just need to be patient. It took us ~5 hours, going slow and eating pizza.

To get started...

• Remove seats
  
• Remove carpet from behind the seats and where the top folds down
  
• Remove the metal cover on top of the fuel tank
  
• Jack up rear of car and remove both rear wheels and fender liners
  
• Remove plastic trim around seatbelts, then remove seatbelts
  
• Remove stock Mazda "bracing bar" behind seats

Then you place the bar in the car. There are three holes at each of the four mount locations. One of those three holes lines up with an existing hole in the car. You drop a bolt in there to line things up, then (gulppp) get out your electric drill and drill holes through your sheet metal for the other two. After you drill the holes, there are backing plates that go under the car to hold everything together.

After the bolts, you "only" have to reassemble the interior. This involves cutting part of the metal fuel tank cover, cutting the plastic around the seatbelts, and (if you choose) cutting the carpet to accommodate the bars. I need to cut my carpet still.

First impressions... The car looks far less girly and far more badass. About as badass as a Miata can. It makes the chassis a bit stiffer. It hurts if you lean back and smack your head on the bar. I need to get padding for the bar. Raising and lowering the roof can still be done from the driver's seat, but requires a good deal of contortion.

Only photo so far, will get some "finished" ones after work: