racing harness question

[petes85gt]

OK. After my last seat belts screwed up in the vert, a finally put in the tan ones I bought from Jeremy. They work great, but was a serious pita. The problem is I had a rollbar and all the rear interior stuff in. Its just a 4pt one (don't race or anything, just the fact that there's really nothing between my head and the ground if I flip it kinda bothered me), so I just unbolted it, but the panels are kinda wedged between the bars, so ya kinda had to inch the rollbar, inch the panels, etc. until you could mover the panels away enough to pull the bar out. Anyways, I was wondering if putting in harnesses would be a viable option to prevent having to do this again. The idea of putting them into my basically stock car sounds kinda ricey, but not having to pull the bar out again would help me get over it quick. Plus I'd thing the harnesses would keep me from losing my driving position during turns. Also, before I bought the tan ones, I was running black ones because I could never find any tan vert belts. If this things still around later on and I decide to put it back to stock, it would be nice to have some regular seatbelts to use. Apparently tan wasn't a popular interior choice, and the vert ones are different from the hard tops, so finding another pair seems unlikely.

Anyways, sorry about rambling on I'll just summarize here:

Are racing harnesses street legal?

If so should I put em in my basically stock car?

[skod]

That's a can of worms. The federal laws surrounding mandatory safety equipment are pretty specific: you can't legally modify them from their stock conditions. There are situations in which this has bit people, who have found themselves stopped by a policeman in a bad mood and were written up for having non-stock belts, taillights out, ugly trousers, and everything else under the sun. Frankly, I'd rather have good harnesses and take my chances with the cops- and I did exactly that for over 10 years without a problem. But the fact is that if a cop takes a dislike to you for whatever reason, they *can* and sometimes will write you up for having harnesses. My solution was to go to great lengths not to piss off the cops. (;-)

Having said that, harnesses are completely useless as safety items unless they are a) as *short as possible*, and b) installed properly. One of the silliest ricey things I've ever seen is a set of harnesses that had the shoulder belts extend all the way to the taillight panel in a Fox. The problem is that belt webbing is designed to stretch a specific controlled amount to help absorb impact loads in a serious crash- and the longer the run to the anchor point, the greater the total stretch. With belts that long, the shoulder belts would not have done a thing for the driver in an impact.

Belts need to mount to structure as close to the seat as is physically possible, which means that you need a roll hoop with a cross bar right behind the seat. And that brings its own issues in a street car: a nice, hard, rigid roll bar is going to *win* a battle with your skull in a rear end impact on the street, when you don't have a helmet in between the two. So, running track safety gear in a street car also requires a bit of thought. I did it for years, and I'd do it again, but everyone should realize that a roll bar that solves one set of hazards brings with it another set.

If you are going to do safety gear, do it right, and do the hell out of it. With street belts and an impact at anything over maybe 30mph, you can end up literally *anywhere inside the car*, and that bar is just waiting for you. Even with a well-installed race seat and harnesses, you will still find that your spine will stretch enough to let you whack your head on things _much_ further away than you might believe. I have been in attendance at an on-track t-boning with an S2000 car where _bottom edge_ of the steering wheel was bent by the driver's helmet hitting it (with the matching ding in the driver's helmet!).

To study this very important issue further, I highly recommend that anyone interested get a copy of the proceedings from the 1994 SAE Motor Sports Engineering Conference. That two book set has a revised version of the original 1990 paper from Downing on the HANS, the Simpson foam barriers, a well researched article from GM on racing restraint systems, and detailed analysis on the incidents during the 1994 Indy 500 season. The attached scan is from the GM article, and let me see exactly *how* that S2000 driver did in his steering wheel- and led me to start buying lightweight helmets...

ISBN 1-56901-570-6 for the 1994 chassis book. I've been getting these proceedings for a long time, and they are an invaluable resource: I can't think of a year that I didn't learn something from...

http://www.foureyedpride.com/phpBB2/...hp?pic_id=4451

[petes85gt]

Thanks for the help. The problem is I live in Alabama and the DOT here isn't exactly helpful on this issue. If I did go the harness route I'd still keep the old seat belts in. I'd thought about the rollbar collision killing me, but I'm pretty short so I didn't think it'd be that much of an issue. I hadn't thought about using harnesses so having a bar directly behind me didn't figure into the decision. If I did get em they'd be attached the rollbar itslf, not some other part of the car. The main reason I was asking here was to see what the response be. The only real reason I would be doing this would be for a convenience factor, not particularly a safety one. Honestly I don't expect to go this route, but if something happened with my current belts in a few years, I don't want to spend a lot of time finding new belts if I don't have to. I mainly wanted to see if this was a viable option.

[slickshift]

I mainly wanted to see if this was a viable option.

Me too
What I found was, at least in my state, you can have aftermarket harnesses
BUT the stock safety equipment (seat belts) must be functional to be street legal

[fordfreak300]

I mainly wanted to see if this was a viable option.

Me too
What I found was, at least in my state, you can have aftermarket harnesses
BUT the stock safety equipment (seat belts) must be functional to be street legal

this is the case in most states. Stock seat betls where designed ina way so that durring a roll over if the roof caves in, you move to the center of the car.
safety laws still mandate you wear factory seat belts while driving on the road. plus it is a pain to put them on each time you get in your car to wear them properly just to goto the store 5 min down teh road. On the other side of things if you take yur car to a NHRA legal track you will be required to wear a harness since you have a roll bar in your car. So if you ever plan to race your car you will still be buying that harness.