Door Overlap Crash Protection

[Blwalker105]

OK, well that took way longer than I thought! What else is new.

I was just going to put this in my build thread, but on second thought , decided I'd share it here also. As everyone knows, the Street and Coupe versions of our cars are woefully lacking any meaningful door overlap or intrusion protection in the event of a side impact. Unlike factory cars, which have doors that overlap both the A and B-pillars, the only thing keeping a wayward SUV from entering our cockpits, especially at the rear of the door, is a striker plate...Ugggghhhh!

Understand I am not wishing to build a lead-encased factory job, but I felt a little extra weight here might be worth the expense. Basically, I reinforced the upper, inner, door frame with a similar sized, heavy-walled piece of tubing, then built impingement plates fore and aft to keep said door frame from easily entering the cockpit. The front plates hide under the dash pad end pieces and the rear plates look intrusive at first, but actually extend vertically downward from the coupe's inner window area framework. Both plates are 10 ga steel. Since the front area already has some existing framework close-in, I chose thin-walled tubing for these reinforcements. For the rears (being extremely critical at ~8" from my head) I chose heavy, 1/8" wall tubing and triangulated them to the rear cockpit framework. The fronts weigh 2 lbs each and the rears weigh 4.5 lbs each. Each door reinforcement tube adds 3 lbs. And please pardon my strong but sometimes not-so-pretty welding.

[STiPWRD]

This is a great idea, thanks for sharing!

[ben1272]

I like this a lot. Now I find myself thinking about tearing my car apart to implement....

I like how you thought it all through. Great job and thanks for posting all the detail! Your install photos also already answer the questions of compatibility with power windows! Nice.

-Ben

[RM1SepEx]

OK, well that took way longer than I thought! What else is new.

I was just going to put this in my build thread, but on second thought , decided I'd share it here also. As everyone knows, the Street and Coupe versions of our cars are woefully lacking any meaningful door overlap or intrusion protection in the event of a side impact. Unlike factory cars, which have doors that overlap both the A and B-pillars, the only thing keeping a wayward SUV from entering our cockpits, especially at the rear of the door, is a striker plate...Ugggghhhh!

Understand I am not wishing to build a lead-encased factory job, but I felt a little extra weight here might be worth the expense. Basically, I reinforced the upper, inner, door frame with a similar sized, heavy-walled piece of tubing, then built impingement plates fore and aft to keep said door frame from easily entering the cockpit. The front plates hide under the dash pad end pieces and the rear plates look intrusive at first, but actually extend vertically downward from the coupe's inner window area framework. Both plates are 10 ga steel. Since the front area already has some existing framework close-in, I chose thin-walled tubing for these reinforcements. For the rears (being extremely critical at ~8" from my head) I chose heavy, 1/8" wall tubing and triangulated them to the rear cockpit framework. The fronts weigh 2 lbs each and the rears weigh 4.5 lbs each. Each door reinforcement tube adds 3 lbs. And please pardon my strong but sometimes not-so-pretty welding.

Does everyone have a crappy body fit with the top and side sail as shown on the driver's side? The side sail top surface seems to sag where it comes to the front edge. My 818S has the same issue.

[Blwalker105]

Dan, on my car, the side sail doesn't so much sag, it's more that the top surface is too straight. I've largely given up any hopes of any body areas that do not need addressing. I've been futzing with these stupid panels for 6 months now and have resigned myself to just fix what needs fixing and move on. On that note, I was less than happy to have the only thing supporting this middle area of the hardtop be an angle bracket attaching to bare gelcoat...yes, that's right, on my car someone forgot to actually put some fiberglass behind the gelcoat. To place most of the stress on a somewhat larger structure, I fabricated brackets to support the middle part of the hardtop. For my pictures, everything is kind of hanging loosely...when attached and shimmed properly, the gaps actually almost disappear but at the expense of a week's labor. I know I will have another month of sanding and primping and shimming to get everything looking copacetic down the road, but I don't see an alternative.

Here is the bracket I made to slip into the rear firewall cross tubing to carry most of the weight of the middle hardtop area. The plate with two studs I glassed onto the underside of the hardtop.





Here is the stud plate glassed onto the underside of the hardtop





And here is the whole thing in place.

[Blwalker105]

Stupid Imgur...here are some larger pics.