jeffz993

Great timing, I was going to start a thread asking ? about roll bar, harness, and seats. (maybe I still should this thread drited a little) I want to do some more d.e. stuff with my 993 but still a weekend street car. What is a happy medium ? It's in the shop for install of roll bar and 5 pt. harness. Then next is a search for seats that still are user friendly for street use, not looking for much. I get the point's on it all works together, the whole package. I was planning on a few steps at a time but sounds like i need to do the seats now also. great info. jeff

M758

My feeling is that to effectively use a Harness you need a seat with proper routing holes for the harness and you need a solid way to mount the shoulder straps of the harness. In most cases a strong shoulder harness mounting ends up being a roll bar. Most "harness bars" are just not that strong. If you can't mount the harness effectively then it is better to use 3pt belts.

I agree that roll over protection is better than none, but then again so is a cage. Of course a cage on street is far from ideal. Compromises...

I do feel that if you use a harness you should get a Head & neck restraint. This way you head's motion is controlled to a similar level as the body.

RedlineMan

OY....

This will do nothing to deconstruct my position as a preeminent Rennlist Blowbag. Mea Culpa. I can't help it... it just comes out this way.

Oh woe, the dear neglected Search function. With gritting teeth, and without benefit of popped corn or other analgesic...

Unlike the Free Form Regenerating Metallic Terminator, we've yet to find the Magic Bullet that will kill this Trojan Horse for good. The tentacles of myth run far too deep, it seems. The Matrix holds forth, still.

Read, and Re-read, and re-read again what Kurt wrote. Do that until you can quote it back verbatim. Then, understand it. Thanks to him for putting it down yet again. I scarcely had the strength.

Let me offer some further thoughts that might trip a few switches toward the Light Side.

If you are inclined toward statistics, you would no doubt find a surprising quantity of zeros to the right of the decimal point before you'd hit the percentage of roll overs in DE driving. Assess this risk - along with all others - as you will, for yourself. Another recent thread saw me in at 200-something track days. I recall one on it's lid in all that time.

Regarding the violent forces Kurt mentions. 3-point belts do virtually NOTHING except for straight forward. Far less than a harness in ANY scenario. Now picture the average sled test with a dummy in a harness. Can you see yourself physically resisiting such forces? When you apply these notions to an inversion, know that car roofs do not impact occupants. Occupants impact roofs. Given these FACTS, can you see yourself avoiding contact with a roof?

You'll obviously be far safer with a properly rendered harness, in every way, than with a 3-point, because you will eliminate MANY hundreds of units of your own free flying kinetic energy from any possible impact with the interior of the chassis.

Finally, tubing is only good if it is good. Yogi-isms notwithstanding, look carefully at the architecture and application of a roll bar, applying basic mechanical and geometric standards, to see if it makes sense. You should soon see that Tequipment = Eye Candy, more or less.

Don't use these ideas to LIMIT your safety equipment. Use them to INFORM your decisions.

And stay safe out there!

NAO

Your safety should always be No 1.

TR6

Where are the side bars for the doors? Statistically, I would think you have a much great chance of getting t-boned than rolling over and crushing your roof.
My point is, where does one draw the line....

Larry Herman

Re-read post #5.

TR6

No argument here. That is a great post. The real dilemma is for folks like me running a dual purpose car on the track. Any car without all of the safety features you listed in post #5 is going to be a compromise on safety. And a dual purpose car is always a compromise. Even the car pictured above. I guess my point is everyone has their own tolerance for risk and at what point they are willing to compromise. And if part of that compromise is that you have a roll bar without a full cage including side bars, you are still taking your chances because you have less than a full safety system.

RedlineMan

Ha...

In my experience, I'm at 2:1, Rolls-to-Tbones, but your point is well taken. It is a slippery slope. To add to that, a roll bar does not even support the most vulnerable portion of the roof. Yet another reason I reject the falacious notion of "mandatory" roll bars.

Larry Herman

That is exactly the point. A dual purpose car will always be a compromise. On performance and on safety. I had a GT3 equipped exactly as the one above, and I sold it because a) I wanted to race again and b) I realized that at the speeds I was going (over 165 at VIR) I was not safe enough. I bought a "street only car" too, both for not much more than I got for the GT3.

This brings us to the crux of the issue. Either your are going to be as safe as you can, or you are not and you accept the increased risks for whatever reasons that you choose. No one here can tell you if you are safe enough, but we can certainly tell you when you are making decisions that are less safe than they appear.

Noel

OK, I'll say it and it won't be popular. One way to improve safety in a dual purpose car is to simply not use R compound tires. This will slow the car down and a slower car usually equals less severe crashes. That said, there are and will always be certain types of crashes that will be issues and the type and amount of safety equipment you add will be a compromise.
Safety is a bigger issue now IMO in the era of the 996/997s than ever due to the large disparity between them with there high HP and my old 172HP SC. The new cars are just too fast.

mdrums

I agree...but after reading this good thread most of you make me feel like quiting this hobby! I can not afford a Porsche as my street car and a dedicated track car with full roll cage in ready to race form and trailer and tow vehicle. I do not have any room at my house to store all this stuff.

My biggest delima is I can not go out and get a cheap something with a manual tranny due to my so called handicap. I need something with some sort of Tiptronic like tanny...those cars have only come around as of late and are still expensive.

Anyway, you all have made me really think about this hobby and maybe I am in over my head with not being safe with my stock 997S with stock seat belts and seats. I was going to get a harness bar and 4pt belts but according to Larry and others those are no good.

Alan G.

Used to be people drove their car to the track, learned to drive better then drove home. Now a very high percentage of people trailer dedicated track cars, and fast ones at that. (Sorry Redline Man).

I have tried to go the dual purpose route, but for me once I put a cage in it it is done for as a street car, and a roll bar in a street crash probably adds to the danger.

Life is full of compromises and risk, but being as track safety is an unacceptable avenue to increase risk, it comes down to a dedicated track car or no track decision. When I look at it subjectively, it tells me that its probably time to quit while I'm ahead.

RedlineMan

Whoa....

Let's back up a bit. This safety thing is getting carried to ridiculous lengths, which is my main gripe with the increasing regulations. Forcing people to do things to their cars to "improve safety," when I am rather dubious that the people making these decisions really know enough about the subject to avoid INCREASING danger in some instances.

As myself, Larry and others have intimated, it is not that you absolutely need a certain level of equipment to be safe. It is that you need to make good decisions on what level you want to aspire to, and then - perhaps most importantly - that you drive within the "limits" of the equipment you choose. That is the part of the safety equation that is overlooked.

Can we or can we not leave this part of the equation to the participant, or must we make these decisions for them, assuming they are too ignorant to do it for themselves? We've all seen people of both stripe, for sure. The informed, and the ignorant.

We have all been doing this for many years with only a few serious injuries, and one fatality. Regarding the latter, we don't even know for sure what the circumstances were. All we know is that the man expired, and that he was driving. In my estimation, the rush to increased safety based on the conjecture derived from this lone incident is fraught with difficulty, to say the least.

From my perspective, a necessary part of everyone's safety equipment is KNOWLEDGE. This is the one thing that is SEVERELY LACKING in the rules I see coming out. To my mind, making a rule that someone has to have something is not complete, nor proper. As a self-determinist, I say that we should arm the participant with the KNOWLEDGE of what he may encounter - MAY encounter - so that each can make a truly informed decision based on the level of risk he is willing to accept.

That's my game. Educate. Isn't that what DE is for?

Hey... You want safety rules? Here's one Noel will like. How bout NO R-
COMPOUND TIRES until at LEAST one year after sign off? How much safer will better drivers be? I'd rather have a skilled driver hauling *** with nothing but a helmet and his wits than an ignorant one hauling *** with a full system.

Larry Herman

Mike, I am not trying to be the prophet of gloom and doom here. I just want people to be aware of their decisions. A harness bar and 4 point belts are not the right setup. A harness bar designed with the strength to properly mount the belts (or more preferably a roll bar), racing seats with proper belt holes and 5/6 point belts with properly mounted subs is the NEXT step up from a stock car. There is no intermediate step.

All of what I have suggested is bolt-in (even a quality roll bar like a DAS Sport) and your car can return to stock on a whim. Although I would prefer more, it is the setup that we have in my kids cars. It can be done for a couple sets of Hoosiers, and really is not that much money in the scheme of things.

Gary R.

Sell the 997S, buy two Boxster S's (or one S for the track, one non-S for the Street) w/Tiptronic or two 99 996's, set one up with full track safety gear. I went a route similar to that because I only wanted to spend "so much" on this hobby too. Didn't really work out for me but theoretically it's a good move.