How many times have you gone to the track and seen racecars with scratched up roll cages? In many instances if the cage wasn’t made from chromoly, rust might be showing through on the DOM (drawn on mandrel) or mild steel. There’s an easy solution to keep the cage looking clean in areas where they might come in contact – tube protectors. One company that makes stylish but functional tube protectors is Tim McAmis and their carbon fiber covers.
We wanted to keep the cage on our Factory Five Challenge car project looking clean for years to come.
McAmis’ tube protectors come in two different diameters. One for 1.25-inch to 1.50-inch diameter tubes and another for 1.625-2.00-inch diameters. Both options come in 59-inch lengths. The tubes are flexible and can be cut with any normal cutting device. While we opted to not round off the edges, it can be handled easily with 80-grit sandpaper. The covers feature a gloss carbon fiber finish and are made in the USA.
(Left) The carbon fiber tube protectors look great and feature a gloss black finish. (Center) The side and door bars are the only places we needed the covers outside of the engine bay. (Right) The front down bars in the engine bay can be easily scratched when working on the engine.
Our Project FFR Cobra Jet Challenge came with a freshly powder coated frame from Factory Five Racing. We wanted to keep the frame looking good in the areas we thought that were going to scratched up the most. For us, that was the side bars of the roll cage, passenger door bar, and the support bars inside the engine bay.
The carbon fiber tube covers in the engine bay look great while providing protection. It even matches our carbon fiber engine bay theme!
The doors in our car are non-functional. This means that you need to put your butt on the side bar and swing your legs into the cabin. On the driver’s side we opted for a small piece on the door bar in case the passenger needs to step on it to get out of the car. Finally, the front down bars run very close to the valve cover and will be a highly trafficked area when working on the engine bay.
When it comes to attaching the covers there are two different methods -riveting or silicone. The tubes come with an adhesive backing to help hold them in place. In conjunction with this we used rivets on each corner to hold the covers in place. Since the adhesive backing is not strong enough by itself, McAmis recommends applying dime sized clear silicone circles spaced about 4-inches apart. Then wrap the tube in blue tape until the silicone dries.
Thanks to Tim McAmis for creating these functional and fashionable tube protectors. Now ugly looking door and harness bars are all but a thing of the past!
Simply put, the Tim McAmis roll cage tube protectors look and fit great. It’s a great accent to the vehicle while also providing protection.