street legal harness

[Stuwey]

Child Anchor points are rated to 384kg, whilst seatbelt mounts have to be 1550kg.

Think again, sorry!

[sambb]

yep just found that out myself - knew it was a long shot.

[sambb]

I spoke to a proper compliance engineer (NSW) today about seats/harnesses and two seater engineering, so for anyone who's interested here is what he said:

From the harness point of view he said he would go 5 point minimum or just stick to the lap sash belt, even for competition. He said there is just too much evidence that 4 point harnesses promote submarining which can cause abdominal injuries that you won't get with lap sash 3 pointers. I asked him about the Schroth 4 point harnesses that have been talked about above which plug/bolt to the rear seat anchor points and their claim that having one shoulder strap stretch at a rate different to the other prevents submarining. He said that a company like Schroth couldn't/wouldn't make that claim unless it was true to some extent but that he would still rather crash in a lap sash than a commonly available 4 point harness, and he was dead against the use of rear seat belt anchors because the angle could break the seat and/or cause spinal compression. He said he would never pass a 5 or 6 point harness anchored that way so to suggest that a 4 pointer anchored that way would be safe is a bit dodgy to him. So long and short he recommends 5 or 6 point harnesses (they must be ADR approved if you will have them installed in a street car) if you are going to bother and they have to be anchored to a dedicated mount with the car engineered as a two seater.

As far as seats go he said there is a rule that in a two door the rear seat occupants need to be able to exit the vehicle in an emergency which suggests that both seats need to be reclinable. He said that can be a grey one and he could present a case that a one piece bucket could go in on the drivers side if the passengers seat remained a folding recliner. If the car was to be a street registered car then the seat and rails would have to be ADR approved. If there are no dedicated ADR approved rails for our car, then you can buy generic/adaptable autotechnica ADR rails and massage those. But at any rate even considering that all the gear you install is ADR approved, it still needs an engineers tick to be legal/registerable/insurable.
The kicker with seat selsction for a road registered car is that if the standard seat has airbags, then so too does the seat that replaces it. He basically said good luck finding an ADR approved airbag one piece bucket that doesn't already weigh as much as the seat we already have. He thought recaro might do one and pretty much said that considering the costs involved you would only really do it if you needed that seat to make fitment of a 5 point harness possible. At the end of the day though, the harness and your standard seat belt would have to remain dual fitted in the car and you could only use the lap sash belt on the street swapping to the harness at the track. If the car is not road registered though then the seat, rails, harness config is all up to you subject to an engineer/CAMS approval.
At the end of all this I've pretty much decided that stock standard seat/seat belt is the cheapest and possibly safest combo. I asked him about my car competing in road registered class and could I be protested for having the rear seats out of the car and he said that no matter which way you look at it they would probably uphold the protest. So my only solution there he said is to pull all the seat belt hardware (including the retractors - ****!) and seats out of the back and get an engineers certificate for a two seater = 600-700 bucks. In civilian times though it would mean I would be running around as a 5 seater with a 2 seater certificate which is technically illegal and he said that would be entirely up to me re insurance question marks etc in the event of an accident on the road. The engineering money spent would nearly be worth it eg It would be nice to be covered in the event of a protest and be able to politely tell the protagonist to F^&$k off.

[Eddy]

Hoyhoy.

Well chaps I put one of these in years ago, they are great.

CG-Lock Seatbelt Safety Devices

[sambb]

I use something similar to that. It does help a lot doesn't it.

while I'm at it there's something I forgot to mention that I learnt that's relevant to road cars with airbags and no cage on the track and that is to run with your windows up. At the Bathurst hillclimb last year a guy in an M3 in my class put his car backwards into the wall and finished up sideways along it below skyline and they had to cut him out with neck injuries. Apparently witnesses saw his curtain airbag deploy but then just fly out the open window at the point at which his head probably should have been bouncing off it. Talking to one of the competitors who is an ambo afterwards about the accident, he said that he's seen/heard of the same thing before and that if he'd had his window up the side curtain airbag would have been better able to do its thing. Apparently curtain airbags need a closed cabin to work properly so if you don't have cage/seat/harness/hans then at least running with the windows up will give you the most pillowy crash possible.