PA Hillclimb

The other day I looked at a car a local guy wants to hillclimb. He told me it had a roll bar in it that the maker advertised as "meeting SCCA Specs". Well, yeah,......it meets the specs for autocrossing I suppose, but it did not meet the specs for hillclimbing.

This is the third supposedly SCCA-Legal roll bar I have seen in the past month that is not up to the standards for hillclimbing. In the most unfortunate case a gentleman had come from North Carolina expecting to enter Giants. The roll bar would not pass tech and he was not permitted to enter the car.

I'm bringing this up just to make people aware. If someone tells you they have an SCCA-legal roll bar in their car and they would like to try hillclimbing, please tell them they should get in touch with a tech inspector to verify that what they have is legal.

Rich Rock

Hey Rich,

For the benefit of any beginning readers, what did you find in violation? Rollbars are simple but I can see someone messing up: wrong tube thickness/diameter, no crossbar, no seat brace, braces not welded high enough on the main hoop, etc.

Good to see you at Duryea last weekend. Ugh! - I had been away from PHA too long! I plan on attending all that remain for 2011.

Improper mounting is one issue. One of the "scca-legal" rollbars I reworked to make legal had only one mounting bolt at each of the four attachment points!

Lack of crossbar behind the driver seat was another one.

In the case of the Mustang which was turned away at Giants, it was custom-built supposedly by an scca racer. The design was all wrong. It had two individual hoops instead of one main hoop spanning the width of the driver's compartment.

Thanks for coming down, Tim!

Rich