Hi Guys,

Just curious, I'm in victoria and was hoping to have a roll cage in my mini k for some added safety, however I am struggling to get an idea of what I would need to do to get it fully road legal and roadworthy on full registration (ideally not club) with a cage in the car.

Does anyone know the rules here? Or someone I should talk to who has managed to do it before? Ideally I would like to keep the rear seats which makes things tricky.

Cheers,

A roll cage is only safer if you are wearing a helmet. Otherwise it is just something else to hit your head on in a crash.

VicRoads have a whole VSI bulletin document thingy for rollcages - materials, anchorages, and assembly types. Wouldn't be easy to make one for a mini that meets all the requirements for a modern system and still allows for rear seat passengers.
The document also discourages fitting them to pure road cars as rollovers in road accidents are rare, so as morris1100 says in any other crash it's something else to get in the way.
These days to do it all by the book I believe it's supposed to be engineered - which could be a costly adventure into the $1000s.

Echoing the theme , of rollcage only if you wear helmets here. Especially if backseats were going to be considered usable. I used to think ( when i was younger and bulletproof) something like a half cage and a full 5 point harness might be okay, but again those heads just seem to roll around a lot when in bingles or even in cases of slip and grip,. Saw a little off a few years ago, car going at less than 30kph tried to come to an emergency stop onto the side of the road... just doddled into a spoon drain ditch,,,, heard later and confirmed, some sort of medical emergency caused the driver to try and stop and get off the road, but the lurch at the end caused his temple to hit the pillar and he died..... so side and head/neck airbags have a place in low speed crashes. Good question though in terms of legalities. Just on the matter of legalities, does anyone know why Race approved helmets are not approved for bikes? have i misread, or is there something different in an indoor helmet and an outdoor one?

The main difference between a motor sport helmet and a bike helmet is that they have to pass different impact tests, a bike helmet test has flat types of impacts like hitting the road, motor sport helmets have things like repeated impacts with round objects (simulating roll roll bars)
The motor sport helmet also has fire tests, the materials must be self extinguishing.

There is quite a bit more into it, I used to care till about ten years ago but I gave up.
I know the FIA lowered the bar to allow lighter helmets to pass the tests in the name of safety (huh?) after it was found that Senna's helmet was illegally modified.

thanks morris 1100 - good info

In what way was it modified Morris. Are you suggesting they did a Colin chapman on it?
Just curious.

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Thanks Guys,

Food for thought.

Cheers,
Evan

A brief summary

Buy bolt in 4 point cage for rear
Either as removable - and keep registered as a four seater
Or leave it in and get re registered as a 2 seater.

Not sure about Victoria but in Queensland it would need to be engineered, mod plated and be completely wrapped in foam.

Yes, they lightened it substantially by sanding down the outer shell.

Odd Spot: a couple of years back there was a Doctor on Sydneys Nth Shore who wore a lightweight helmet in his daily driver Volvo...my memory is dim but I seem to recall the "authorities" having a shot at him for doing so...go figure

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"Show me the Mini!"