| In my opinion an autopower cage is barely safe. Like better than nothing but hardly good protection. On the other hand an Autopower cage is designed to be removeable and fit around the stock dash, door panels and other interior parts. A modifed autopower cage like Carl Merrit's in my opinion is not very safe for racing and not to effective for stiffining the car. He would have been way better off with a custom weld in cage which probably would have cost him about the same amount as modifying the autopower. However at the start of my racing carrier, I raced many times in autopower cages and have seen many bad wrecks with them most of which the driver walked away. I do think that a properly built custom cage is several times safer than an Autopower, weighs just a little more and stifens up the chassis several fold more. Maybe what wasent noticed is the great amount of sheetmetal that was cut away and removed from the interior since the stiffening now comes from the cage. This plus the door beams is about 30 lbs so the new cage ends up being only about 30 lbs more than an Autopower.
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23:49:02 11/17/06
