Rollbar / seats / harness stuff, yet again...

wstar

Well, it seems every company races cars. That doesn't mean every product they put out is good . Best bet would be to call them up and ask them if that harness bar is meant to withstand real harness forces or not, but I don't see why they'd bother with that big bar if it didn't.

That said though, the harnesses they've presumably just laid on there for show may not be installed right. Hard for me to say without actually being there to see all the angles and lengths up close, but I'd think that those belts need to cross.

It also looks like the belts angle upwards from where they're resting in the seat shoulder slots (should be between level and 20 degrees downward), but perhaps it levels out with a sufficiently tall person's shoulder on the other side? And you'd definitely still need something else on the bar to keep the belts in place, e.g. ziptied rollbar padding at least.

I'm not an expert, nor do I play one on TV. Just stuff I'm picking up poring over safety regulations and harness/seat mfg installation guides, etc

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Journal thread / Car setup details

ryan0

Robi knows what he's doing.

I don't know the details behind that bar, but it could just be a custom fabbed one off. I'll check with him, as belts would be nice.


Why would they need to cross?

I agree that the drivers shoulders would probably raise the belts to the level of the bar. you want about a 90 degree angle with your spine.

If you tighten the straps well enough, they shouldn't slide side to side.. keeping them in place wouldn't be 'needed'... and yould only need to keep them about 6" apart if you use a HANS.

The only thing you would HAVE to check is how the belt is looped to the bar, but at first glance that would pass any race tech. (assuming the bar is sturdy)

wstar

Apparently there's an ideal angle for the belts to be at in the lateral direction. They're not meant to go perfectly straight back, they're supposed to be ~20-25 degrees angled inward. Thus, if the bar is more than a few inches behind the seat, they end up coming towards each other pretty significantly, eventually crossing over each other somewhere around the 18-20 inch mark from the back of the seat. If the bar's further back than that, you actually do cross them over and then strap them down on the "opposite" side from where they originated. Then again while mounting that far back "works", it's more ideal/safe to have the bar much closer to the seat, so that there's less length for stretching/slack.

The idea behind putting something on the bar to limit sideways travel (e.g. ziptied padding) is that you put it on the outside edges to ensure the belts don't move out (closer to straight) while loose between rides. Or in the case that they cross over, you put it between them (since the angle would "come loose" towards the center).

Again, I've never installed one in my life, I'm just getting this from internet research. One of the primary references I keep going back to is Schroth's install guide, which has pretty detailed information on this stuff. See pages 12, 13, 18, and 28 here: http://www.schrothracing.com/sdocs/2...structions.pdf.

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Journal thread / Car setup details

ryan0

heh... i think you're getting a little picky on the details..


if you get close to this... you should be fine....

belts level to 20 degrees down from shoulder... slightly closer together (so your HANS doesn't slip through)... mounted as close as you can to the driver...