imported_Slvr-Bullet

Anyone get pulled over or ticketed for having racing seats installed?

motti

There's no offence there, unless you also removed your stock seatbelts in the process.

bbarbulo

iTrader: (2)

oh - oh

bbarbulo

iTrader: (2)

4 point 3 inch camlock FIA/SFI approved harness no good for 'the law'??

I mean, if rally drivers, drag racers, NASCAR, and F1 uses them, they gotta be good enough for me?? stock belts = hurt

imported_Slvr-Bullet

Yah try telling that to a cop...not that it's happened to me...just wanna see what everyone thinks

bbarbulo

iTrader: (2)

it's MY life I'm risking if anyone at all... you know. like I mean if they are worried about install.... well, it's MY life and MY install. so let ME worry about it. like, what if my car didnt come with ABS, and I decide to install it... is THAT illegal? I mean, i'm adding more safety either way... ABS or 4 point harness. Plus my spine won't get all twisted up, plus it's 3 inches to ****** the force so my collar bone doesn't shatter.

motti

First off, you can use a racing harness if you want, but you also have to use the stock belts provided by the manufacturer because they are what the car has been engineered and government-tested as being effective in your car.

Your racing harness may be a wonderful looking piece of stitching, but it has not been through in-place in-your-vehicle government crash testing. There is no way to know if it will function as intended in your particular car, nor is there any way to know even if your particular installation is safe.

Second, you cannot remove or modify the stock belts. Doing so gives a cop grounds for pulling the car off the road for safety reasons.

Third, 4- and 5-point harness actually increase your chances of getting hurt in a serious accident, unless you also have a properly-engineered full roll cage assembly properly installed.

Ordinary lap and shoulder belts are designed to push you down and to the center of the car in a serious collision, away from the windows and down from the roof. That's the safest place in the car when it starts to crush or when intrusion begins. A 4- or 5-point harness will leave you locked in place and vulnerable unless you also have a cage providing additional crush and intrusion protection to the driving compartment.

Of course then you risk bashing your head of the roll cage bars in a collision, and the padding that some people use provides bash protection for only the most minor collisions.

Short is, if you're going to have a 4- or 5-point harness, you need a cage. If you have a cage, you should also need to be sure that your head is well away from any cage bars, otherwise you also need a helmet. And despite all that, on the road you must also use use the seatbelts provided by the manufacturer.

motti

It's OUR medical system that has to pick up the your pieces and put them back together.... and OUR social welfare system that has to support, house, and tube-feed you if the pieces are too broken to fix.


And again, the 4-point by itself can actually have a negative effect on your safety. Safety systems have to be designed to work in conjuction with each other. Changing one piece can have unintended repercussions.

If you rear-end a transport with a standard belt, the impact will, with standard lap and shoulder belts tend to force the upper part of your body down and to the center of the car. A 4-point will leave you locked rigidly in place. You will see the deck level of the transport trailer as it rushes straight at your jaw line, and there will be nothing you can do to duck or otherwise get out of the way of that next impact.

bbarbulo

iTrader: (2)

all very good points... but don't get me started on health care please. I pay my taxes, and then on TOP of that, I have to pay my insurane PLUS my work has to pay for insurance through great-west life. yeah... great system we have

and again... it's my life, if I wanna be locked in as I eat bumper, then so be it. I mean, motorrcycles are far less safe than my car is... we allow those, don't we?? and we pay for them when they get injured? and so on... anyways, pointless argument, you dont make the law so what difference does it make.

bbarbulo

iTrader: (2)

btw, you're on really late...

motti

Motorcycles have their own saving graces. They tend to kill their riders in severe crashes, and a death is a lot cheaper to deal with medically than a maiming.

Also, the issue of belts is more than just about saving you from injury or harm. As I mentioned, there is no way to certify that your particular 4-point belts as installed in your particular car by your particular installer is safe.

So, when you have that crash, there is no way to know that your belts won't just fall apart at the stitchings, or tear out of the mounting points, or sheer off the mounting hardware, or somehow unbuckle. I've seen some pretty incompetent installations by kids trying to save a buck, and I've also seen some 4-point harness sold at prices so low that you have to wonder about the materials, engineering and testing behind them.

Whatever, should your non-government-tested non-certified belts fail, you could ending up bouncing around your passenger compartment. While that's happening, your ability to regain control and avoid secondary collisions is gone. If I'm in the neighbourhood at the time, your willingness to potentially sacrifice your own safety has now been extended to your willingness to also potentially sacrifice my safety.

The same goes for all the other safety standards that we require people to abide by, whether it be vehicle condition and maintenance, or actual driving behaviour. The ripple effects of our choices can all too easily visit unintended consequences on others.

And yeah, I'm on late... I'm working on some reports, and when I'm stuck for inspiration I move to a distraction for a bit, at least until inspiration again comes to mind.

bbarbulo

iTrader: (2)

^^ hard workin guy right here!

you guys don't stop old beaters and check their ball joints and steering racks and whatnot... so you couldn't be THAT worried about safety

as for my belts, Simpson camlock harnesses. you may have seen them in ... ohhh I dunno... every race car on the planet haha Simpson makes everything from neck braces, fire suits, fire extinguishing systems (I think), helmets, gloves, shoes, arm restraints, window nets, etc... they may not be Takata $450USD harnesses, but I'm not paying $450USD for a harness just cuz it came from Japan. These are just under two bills US each, and like I said... nearly every race car uses them. I've owned Sabelt/Sparco ones before which are used a lot racing as well, but those were pretty ****ty in my opinion - 2 inch straps and not cambolt but just a latch. They way they'll be mounted is in the rear pass footwell, about 45* from my hips to the floor, with 1/4 inch steel 2"x1" backing plates that will be bolted and bonded to the floorpan. It'll be bolted to the floor on two sides with M8 Grade 8.8 hardware, and then the lapbelt will bolt to the backing plate through the floor with the hardware that Simpson sends out. The rear straps will go to the OEM mounting locations for the rear pass belts. And no... there are never pass. in the car and, no I do not have rear belts, and I haven't for years.

The reason behind this is for seats. In properly engineering a safe bracket for the car, my dad and I determined the stock rails had to get stripped of it's bracketry for the stock seats, and the new bracketry had to get built in properly. And well, the bracketry for the stock seats happens to have the seatbelt latch attached. So it was decided to, rather than sacrifice seat bracket integrity... that I move to race harnesses. So it wasn't for the look or anyting... I would have loved to have saved $400USD that I'm gonna pay for a pair of Simpson harnesses. But the bottom line is, I paid $1400USD for the pair of seats and I was NOT about to just toss them in with some crusty brackets made to work with the stock bracketry. It all had to get done properly, and this was the end result. Oh, and the seats was also not a cosmetic upgrade neither. The stock seats were too soft and totally unsupportive to contain me under prolly over 1G of cornering force that the car can generate. So really it became a safety concern that I was hanging onto the wheel rather than steering. So the upgrade to more supportive seats had to be made to allow me to keep control of the wheel and a proper driving position.

Finally... in really severe accidents, what actually happens to you is totally random... or if you will "in God's hands". I mean, yes, I realize crash testing has been done since the late 50s early 60s and you prolly consider it a science. Yes, I too consider it a science. But in the real world, there are so many variables that crash testing means virtually nothing. Like ppl who crash w/o seatbelts and get ejected from a car rolling over at 100 km/h and come out unscathed. And then there are others who just fall into a ditch and drown cuz their seatbelts are on. So I'm saying... should God put me in the path of an accident... I'm sure what happens will be up to him regardless of how I'm secured. Like really... do you believe I could 'duck' as I'm rearending a trailer?? There is no chance my muscles could ever overcome the force of impact. I've watched a great deal of crash footage... and I'm sorry, NO ONE can control the path they take in a crash.

bbarbulo

iTrader: (2)

Oh and now you're prolly gonna ask where on the street I'd do a 1G corner, but quite frankly it doesn't matter even if I never do. I build my car so that it's capable EVERYWHERE, not just in one aspect. It's not only a great handling car... but it has to drive nice, look nice, go fast, and stop hard!!! So every upgrade I make starts a domino effect of other changes that have to be made in order to keep that OEM-like balance of matched components for the ultimate in driving pleasure. I should have just bought a used S2K or WRX so I wouldn't have these problems, but the truth is I enjoy it a lot and I want my freedom the be able to enjoy it.

anyways... FOR SURE I'm not going to darknights this year, and it's unlikely I'll take my car anywhere close to toronto from now on. before I really only worried about theivery... now I'm worried about Johnny Quickpistol too. I think my car will spend most of it's time parked over the next few years while the rice-patrol thing blows over and the cops find another group of citizens to harass.

motti

Um, just a quick note...

I know Simpson has a very good reputation in the safety equipment field, unfounded allegations about Dale Earnhart's straps notwithstanding. So in this case belts are not an issue.

But..... you haven't mentioned the presence of a cage in your car.

In absence of a full cage, you are mounting your belts to a highly deformable body structure. The deformation you need to worry about is deformation behind the front seats. If that deformation causes your rear belt mounts to effectively change their relative distance to your shoulders, two things may happen.

The first is that your belts going to the rear will loosen as the car bends in a V with the point of the V facing down behind your seat, and with the front and back of your car forming the upstrokes of the each side of the V. When that happens, the belts will no longer contain your upper body, and your upper body may falil about as a result.

If the car should bend the other way though, say "up" so the V formed by the bent car has the point facing up, you will crush your shoulders and collarbones.

To mount the rear straps that far away from the front seat, you really need a cage to stiffen and create a safety survival cell out of the passenger compartment. Otherwise, those belts cause more harm than good.

bbarbulo

iTrader: (2)

good points. but like I said, in an accident that will wreck the car so badly, the number of REAL WORLD variables is so great that it's like it's in 'God's hands'.

I'm actually considering fabricating a X-brace from the lower OEM belt mounts (bottom of the b-pillar) to each of the rear strut towers. Cuz sedans are inherently 'weak' in that section of the body because of the rear 'non structural' doors. Coupes don't have that problem since they have a trunk AND two doors, and hatches are REALLY weak cuz of the lack of trunk structure and the non-structural hatch part. So I'm somewhere in the middle of torsional rigidity.

But given that fabbing up the brace would be quite difficult with the lack of eq't that I face... I may just go to Gatherer's guy and ask him to weld in a six point cage. Problem then is I gotta have the interior of the car repainted from welding... cuz the car also has to be pretty. See, it's a slippery slope with these modifications... damnit!! For now I think I'll just keep the car parked.

bbarbulo

iTrader: (2)

Oh and Dale Earnhart ~ you spend your life going 200 mph in traffic... one day you can expect to 'wake up dead' as they say. It's an unfortunate accident. That's why I started kinda saying... it's in God's hands. Not that I'm religious, but for example yesterday I found out some guy I know is in a coma. He hasn't lived the 'cleanest' of lives... yet none of his alcoholic binges got to him... ultimately, a van smoked him. So I guess what I'm trying to say, when God (or chance) rings your bell, it's cuz it's your turn, not cuz of anything you've done so much. I mean... there are limitations to that but....

bbarbulo

iTrader: (2)

OK, I just found a roll bar from a very reputable company (Autopower) that's made for my car. Bolt-in design so I wouldn't have to get the interior repainted. $400 USD plus $100 shipping. This is just the rear section, so the front door can still get crushed in. The other option is a full CAGE at a $ 700USD price point. But by then, the car is nearly unusable cuz you gotta hop over the door bar every time plus that's a lotta extra weight for a lil 4 cyl engine to be lugging around. I think I'm gonna go for the roll bar rather than the cage.

imported_Slvr-Bullet

Ok, you guys are ruining my thread :cry:

bbarbulo

iTrader: (2)

what were you asking again? haha... anyways, he answered your question... they have not yet invented a way to ticket us for seats alone. so just hang tight till some tightass can sit down and write down some legislation.

BTW... didn't Hitler create Volkswagen so that everyone would eventually drive the same car?? or something like that...

I guess our own gov't has a lil plan on their own to make us all drive the same cars.

imported_Slvr-Bullet

But I have "heard"/read of people getting busted (i.e. Darknights)