Scouts West

I'm looking for any insight on building or having a full cage built for my Scout II.

I've thought about buying a cage from D and C Extreme (http://dandcextreme.com/product/scout-ii-full-cage-kit/) and then finding someone out here to weld it up, but then i remembered i don't know any welders (at least any i'd trust to weld a cage).

Any help would be great.

Thanks!

I had a D&C cage. Hated it. Sold it and got a real cage custom made to fit my Scout. That being said, what I expect may be entirely different than what you expect. So, I think it matters what you want from a cage. Does it matter if you can easily turn on your headlights or open you glove box? Do you like maximum head room? How about your knees? Like banging the crap out of em every time you get in your truck? Do you run top on or off most of the time? Does it matter to you if your cage follows the lines of your scout or is it fine if the cage looks like it's humping your Scout, like ya may wanna give em some quiet time alone there in the garage. Beyond aesthetics and function and comfort and appeal, what are your thoughts on cost? Is it worth more to you to have a cage built to fit your Scout than the, what are they now, 7-800 bucks plus shipping for a hunchback cage from D&C? And, don't think for a minute the parts they send are tight fit. You'll get a chance to build your tube fitting skills assembling the thing, so some would think that a plus while others would consider it a pain in the ass and curse the builder for having the gaul to charge so much for something that doesn't even fit together out of the box, or boxes or however many cartons it arrives in over several weeks of follow up phone calls to find out we're your cb bars are and where the hell are the feet? And, then as you say, you're not a welder, neither am I and I've got 3 welders. Ya wanna buy a welder and start practicing? Then someday when you think you're competent to do structural welds, you can start fabbing up your cage. Sound like a plan? Or, are you prepared to spend 3-4 times the cost of a D&C hunchback having a real cage built.
These are some of the questions you should spend some time pondering. Sit in your Scout for a while, notice the space and ask yourself how much are you willing to give up to steel bars.

Thanks Tim for the response, your insight is exactly what i'm looking for. I'm not going to lie and say money is no object, but not having gone through this before i'm using this process to set my expectation with respect to how much is appropriate to spend for something i'll be happy with. I have no intention of rock crawling, nor really putting myself in a position to roll over. That being said i want to feel safe with my wife and kids in the Scout whether its on the fwy or a dirt road.

For the sake of the exercise my priority list would be:
1. safety
2. function (i don't want to trip over it, hit my head on it, or lose functionality)
3. aesthetics (i don't want it to look like an after thought).

So i'll put Tim down as a vote for a custom build. To bring it full circle. Who do i call to have that done?

Thanks again,

If you haven't invested some time in considering what best suits your purposes, I'd encourage you to do a lot of that before making any choices. The more information you can gather and the longer you take to make final decisions, the better the chance of having a successful outcome. Or..... just take much of what I said and stay away from cage designs like the D&C if you don't want to be banging body parts on steel tubes all the time.
These pictures are some of what I think are the most egregious failures of the D&C design and, a great many others as well. It starts with the main hoop. In the pictures hopefully you can see how much head room is lost to the hoop. The side bars, out of necessity have to be mounted much lower than they should be and as a result, more able to bang the shit out of your ear. You don't want that, it hurts. Trust me.
You may notice also, speaking of kids in the back; the slightly more restricted access due to the hoop radius not being tight to the roof line. Why does that matter? Getting in, it may not be as important as it might be to the "getting out" should something you've been doing not go quite as planned. You mentioned no rock crawling, no intention of rolling. Nobody intends to roll, not ever. It happens when you least expect it and it happens pretty quickly most of the time. If it does happen and you've laid over on the side or rolled completely; getting out is the number one thing you'll want to do first. Unrestricted egress becomes your primary focus. You don't have to be crawling on rocks to suffer a rollover. They happen on the street. So put those connections out of your mind

most all premade 'roll ''bars ARENT.
the tube size is small.
the tube wall thickness is thin.
wrong steel
and------AND they arent made to attach to the FRAME.
all they are good for is a place for sticking all of them fancy off road lights .
so the factory hardtop will do just fine for most one time roll overs.
and then you wont smack your head on the steel tubes taking up interior space. just the door windows dash and family.
thin tube walls and small diameter tubes will bend fold and spindle.
add to that -attached to the floor and body, by the second roll the bar has torn the body and or torn loose from the body. and half the welds at the joints have pulled loose. so it wont do you any good,
best for use as a safety roll cage if the cage is attached to the frame of the vehicle.
now then--- just a roll bar? behind the drivers seat?
or maybe behind the passenger seat/?
draw a line from the top of the bar to the front of the hood, and notice where your head[s] are in relation to that straight line.oh!
above it!
so unless its a full roll cage including a bar across the top of the wind shield frame, and back from there to another bar across behind the drivers seats, and one across the back by the rear hatch, with vertical bars attached to the frame. then why bother/
no one plans to roll their vehicle but it happens, best is to plan and practice for a roll over, which means bending forwards grabbing the under side of the dash or bottom of back of front seat and hang on . .
dont have any portion of your body above top of the doors, glass doesnt survive roll overs..
then theres all the stuff in your scout flying around as you roll- spare tire, tool box, tire iron, passengers . . dirt , , groceries , lost mildewed hamburger . . cup of coke . .
ever seen a 4x4 roll? Ive been ina few, seen more, and some of the vehicles when recovered were UNRECOGNIZABLE as a vehicle.

Thanks for the replies. all good points. Any leads in south orange county for someone to build one?

I put in a call to the guy that built mine but I haven't heard back from him yet. I'm not sure if he's around anymore, haven't seen him in like 3 years or something. But, I'd say if you were able to make contact with a good fabricator..... not somebody's friend that has a bender and knows how to weld.....definitely not that guy, I mean a good fabricator who knows cages, builds buggies or race trucks for a living, with a real shop and shit, That may be your guy. Maybe Tony Sweet knows of somebody qualified down there in SOC to do the work.

And don't let anybody try to sell you cheap thin wall tube. I took a quick look at your D&C link and noticed they still build the main hoop, there's still a severe lack of gusseting going on, they've got metal grab bars which again, are good for a gash on you head, and generally, what I think is total crap they sell to guys who don't plan to roll but want to "feel" safe-"er". Like John said, a sort of make believe cage that's more show than go. AND!!!!!! they sell you the cheap cage and charge extra for something like DOM tube as well as all the other things that I think a well designed and built cage should already have.

These pictures are the cage I have which to this day remains one of the finest examples of a true cage built for a Scout that I've seen. It was designed and built by Chris Johnson of Rocktech Offroad and John Rocha. You can see how it fits the vehicle, the back legs run all the way back, it follows the lines of the vehicle so with the top off it wont look like Quasimodo jumped on for a quick one, it offers unencumbered access to the dash, isn't in the way of your appendages, is tucked up against the top to give your head plenty of swing room. Notice the bar across the dash pad below the windshield for added lateral stability. The Jesus bar that later got padded was my idea. Notice that every joint though welded to perfection is gusseted. It's made from 1 3/4 125 wall DOM tube. It's almost the perfect 6 pt. cage. Some of the features that John talked about are not included owing to my Scout was built as essentially a street truck that could go in the dirt if I wanted it to. It has a lot more creature comforts built in than many Scouts including what was intended to be 4 person seating so a cross bar at the B pillar was not part of the equation. Having lived with this cage for several years now, if I were to add one thing, I think I'd try running horizontal bars from the back to the B pillar on each side just above the wheel wells with welded on tabs for tie downs and cargo nets. That would be a good add if it could be done.

There is one thing that could present a problem. It did me. As you can see in the pictures, at the time I put the cage in I was running a 727. Jim dandy. Until I went to a T19. The clutch pedal wasn't a problem but getting to the E-brake pedal was impossible. The E-brake bracket already has to be move slightly inward past the A pillar so the pedal is accessible but with the addition of a clutch pedal, feet too big to fit so I had to make further alterations or adjustments to have an E-brake, like a stick to depress the pedal with. Other than that, no issues.
These things I'm showing you and talking about are simply food for thought. The world is full of ideas and sometimes even better mouse traps come along. But, these represent some of the things you should be thinking about and considering for your own build so that when you hook up with a fabricator you've got some ideas about what you'd like to have.

Thanks again for the reply. I met Tony a couple months ago and have reached out to him as well so on that front we are on the same page.
Your cage looks great! i especially like the work around the dash. If you don't mind, i'm going to save these pictures and use them for future discussions with fabricators. I have a manual transmission, so i'll likely need to address pedal issue as well.