leedav

Rollbar padding is cheap. You can put it on the rollbar with wrap-ties. If you have room for an extra layer, use it. . Make sure the sharp cutoffs on the wrap tie face away from you. If you don't have room for your helmet, cut the ties when you go to the track.

BTW as a former Miata owner, I always felt safer in the street with the rollbar. I figured it gave me some structure if I ever got T-boned.

JimB

When I had my big racing crash my head hit the cage so hard that I couldn't see for what felt like several minutes but it was likely just seconds. That was with a very good helmet and the super dense, high priced rollbar padding. That type of hit on the street would be real bad. What are the chances of the seat breaking ar in some other way your head getting to where the rollbar is? Who knows? All this stuff is such a compromise when you use your car on both the street and the track.
Jim

peachboy

So...if you don't have two cars what do you do ? Are there removeable roll-bars out there ?

leedav

One of the reasons I went the dedicated race car route.

Holger B

From what I can tell, it's unlikely in my car that I could make contact with the bar unless the seat (GT3 in my case) came loose. If the accident were that severe, I'm not sure if it would matter if I then hit the bar.

Holger B

I probably will eventually. The technology is relatively new, so I'd like to see it evolve more before I get one. For my driving style and the tracks & events that I run at, I feel good about my current setup.

peachboy

Lee,

Can I quote your safety review as a good reason when I show up home with another Porsche and my wife goes postal ???

Seriously I'm sort of thinking about it. In Canada you can get an early 996 pretty darn cheap. Lot's of lease returns.

karlooz

well, i guess with your instructors rationale, a lot of boxster owners would be killed. the roll hoops on the boxster are closer to the head than a roll bar would be with a 996.

actually, my head is closer to the roof frame (which joins the a-pillar and b-pillar) than the roll bar.

i think it all is height dependent as well. the taller you are the closer you are to the roll bar AND the roof frame. actually a tall person's head might be right beside the b-pillar. might as well pad it then, huh?...

Sanjeevan

A dedicted track car is the ideal way to go,...but there is also tremendous fun in taking your daily driver to the track and truly testing it's limits (boy, the limits, which I have'nt even remotely approached yet, is simply phenomenal, infact driving my p-car on hwys. is so boring for me now, I rarely do so) without the hassles of owning a trailer. But, there is always compromises in having a street/track car for safety.
If you look at the pictures I posted, the middle one shows where the bar is in relation to the headrest, the headreast is at least a foot away from the bar, and my head is a few inches lower than the headrest, so the only way for me to hit the bar is for the seats to come off it's attachements and my big head stretching the belts to pop up higher than the headreast, I think there is negligible chance of that happening at street speeds, and in fact I did'nt even install the high density padding I bought. I know ii's easily possible for the seat to flex rearwards and the belts to stretch and the head to come up, but if the seat does'nt break there is no way for my head to hit that horizontal bar. Roll cages (as in Jim,B track car) how ever are a totally different.

There is extra safety in other aspects of a stock car..., airbags, AWD, PSM.

SRL

Your instructor was probably talking about a roll cage , not a roll bar. A roll bar is not so much a concern to an un-helmeted driver as a cage, with the bars overhead and running down the A-pillars to their mounting points, would be.

Personally, just as I wouldn't race in a car without a cage, I wouldn't drive on the street in a car with a cage, sans helmet (which would look pretty stupid, so I just wouldn't do it).

It's good to see everyone here thinking safety and it is a very healthy response to Ben's accident. It'd be nice to think that someone's life could be saved from the discussions that have taken place after the tragedy.

Eli K

SRL,
It was a rollbar...not a cage. I posed a question about installing a tequipment roll bar in my 996, while the 964 is getting an engine transplant...

Eli K

The 996 tequipment roll-bar is a bolt-in. The problem is one has to remove both seats each time, which is a major PITA..

karlooz

hey is that TD in DC behind you (your avatar) ?

karlooz

just ordered the isaac link, sparco/schroth 6pts and tequipment roll bar came in yesterday. busy weekend ahead.

Eli K

Yeah..that pic was taken about 3 seconds before he blew my doors off on the back straight at Mid-Ohio...
Here is the link to TD's recording of the event. You can see my car in front of him for about 10 seconds in the beginning of the clip...
MID-OHIO LAP
Try right-clicking to save locally as the file may take a while to download.

PS1. TD, hope you don't mind me posting the vid...
PS2. Lee sorry for the hijack...