andrewdr

I am considering seats, techquipment bar, harneses, which will result in deactivation of the side air bags. The car is a daily driver, what are your opinions with regard to compromising safety as a daily driver since there will be no side airbag.

chrisp

I see two issues with harnesses & race seats in street cars:

1 - the headrest area is super hard and offers no impact protection. I wouldn't want my head to hit that without a helmet on.

2 - harnesses firmly plant you in the seat. I believe that in a roll-over it's good for the body to be able to slide to the side/forward and get away from a crushing roof.

ilko

I have a 6-point harness and a 3-point seatbelt in my car. I don't use the harness unless I'm at the track. The harness is very limiting during normal daily driving - it's hard to turn around, or reach the center console even. And the point Chris makes about the headrest area in a race seat is very true. I'm a little concerned about it and was thinking of putting a little cushion between the cloth upholstering and the plastic shell of the seat.

RonCT

I went through the same analysis a while back - to modify the 997S for track or get a track car. A roll bar is no problem because it's all behind the seat (vs. a cage - I'd never drive on the street with a full cage because you really need a helmet to be safe from head injury). I did not want to lose the airbags in a street oriented car - so I contemplated buying the new 997 GT2 seats in order to retain "oem safety equipment". In the end, I left my 997S alone (actually backed out AWE full system, Fikse wheels and RA1s) and bought myself a 964 with a roll bar, race seats, 6-point (and 3 point for street), etc.

VaSteve

Put on a suit (if you wear one to work) and sit in someone's car with race seats. See if it compromises your daily driving. :lol:

I use the 3pt for the street/paddock and the harness on the track. The seats stink for anything involving me getting my wallet out. I never think about side airbags. I have 5 cars and only 2 of them (now) have airbags.

DarkSideDE

We have racing seats in our 944S2 - and it is my hubby's daily driver. I hated it, found it uncomfortable and hard. However, recently I found out it was because how it was originally installed. Just last weekend we had them reinstalled - and now they don't hurt my rear end when we go over a bump.

Original installation had a metal plate under the whole seat - ouch.
New installation has the old manual 944 slats - attached to bars - leaving some room for the seats to have some flexibility.

We use the original factory installed seatbelts on the road, and the harnesses on the track.

But I think VaSteve has given you an excellent idea - but I guess I'm just trying to add to it by letting you know of my personal discomfort. P.S. The original installation, the seats could not be moved from the position they were installed in, the new installation - they slide like any other seat to where you want it to be for your leg room. Also, we made sure to get 2 part racing seats - so the backs could be adjusted. Again, for comfort of a daily driver.

JackOlsen

Most race harnesses aren't technically street legal, which might be a problem if you're pulled over and the cop is looking for an excuse to write you up.

I disagree with RonCT about a roll bar being safe for your head while a cage is dangerous. The bar behind your head is where your noggin goes in the event you get rear-ended. You want high-density padding on it, whether it's a part of a cage or part of a reinforced roll hoop. In fact, you want high-density padding on any hard steel within about 24 inches of your head. In a collision, your skull won't know the difference between a roll hoop bar, a cage bar or the rolled line of the roof between the A and B pillars. It's all hard steel.

It's worth noting that roll bars and cages protect you from intrusion and roof collapse on the street in the same way they do on the track. Your head might be in more danger, but the whole cockpit is probably safer with a cage. There's a trade-off.

Except with a harness bar. Outside of holding the belts, it doesn't really do anything at all for collision safety -- and it could conceivably snap your spine in a rear-impact collision (it depends on whether or not the seat folds). Race seats that aren't SFI-rated usually mean getting a seat-back brace to protect your neck and back from the bars behind it.

RonCT

I fail to see how it is at all possible to hit your head on a roll bar that is about 6-12" (on a diagonal) behind you and there's a racing seat / head rest between you and it. I've looked at this 6-ways to Sunday and I just can't see how there's any way it's possible. If I have my 3-point OEM belt on and somehow I come out of my seat, I'll hit my head on the headliner of the car - the race seat prevents otherwise. I've never heard of an issue with ROW cars sold with the same Pole Position seats and OEM Porsche roll bars.

todinlaw

I have the GT3 seats, bar and 6-point harnesses and the stock 3 point belt. You need to keep the 3 point belt to be legal in many states. the GT3 seats on comfort are not bad but it is a compromise. If you are a big man or have a bad back you might want to do some riding in a car with them installed. On safety i did not consider the lack of a cushion on the head rest, but another factor just as if not more important, you and your passenger will lose the thorax air bag. and if you do not get the computer re programed i am not sure your passenger will have a frontal air bag either. I suspect it could be a violation of federal law to disable a air bag but it did not stop me from doing it. I do drive my 3 on the street but not allot. I did this mod by myself, so if i need to I can always change it back to stock.

VaSteve

I have said before, if I pop out of the seatbelt and seat and hit my head on the roll bar BEHIND it's because my body probably looks like a pez dispenser. The bump I get on the noggin will pale in comparison to my broken neck.

JackOlsen

Seats bend and distort, even in low-speed impacts, and 3-point belts are designed so that your body does a lot of flopping around inside the cabin. (It's a totally different approach from race harnesses; it's the reason you don't need a HANS with 3-point belts.)

Talk to an EMT or paramedic sometime about where heads and limbs end up in collisions, even when belts are used. You'll look at your roll bar in a whole new light.

That said, I'm not an expert on collisions. But I pad the steel bars that are anywhere near my head.

RonCT

Thanks Jack - that's what I was looking for is some idea of how something 6-12" behind my seat could come into play. I suppose in a really bad accident, you could get thrown around / out of your seat and end up hitting all sorts of things like the steering wheel, dash, door, headliner, etc. I'd have to imagine that if somehow my melon ended up a foot behind the racing seat, I've got some serious issues other than hitting my head on the bar ;-) I still find it interesting that Porsche delivers / has delivered cars with roll bars in ROW. I would think that if a bar was a safety hazard, they couldn't sell them / install them...

JackOlsen

This footage is of a low-speed (35 mph?) front impact, so it doesn't show much happening with the seat. But as it moves in closer you can get an idea of how much head travel takes place, and how that's part of the design -- look at how much movement the belt allows in a car that is doing very well in the test. Imagine a more complicated impact pattern and more 'Porsche-like' speeds.

The side impact in this clip isn't all that hard, and the driver is well-restrained in a race harness, but when it moves to the in-car persoective you can see the kind of energy involved in an impact that looks pretty mild from the outside.

When I hit the wall at Laguna Seca, I wasn't hurt, and was surprised at how fast I was going when I went into the concrete barrier. Looking at the video, later, there weren't any surprises -- until I went through it frame by frame and saw that me head extended fully forward to the steering wheel and then came back in the space of about two quick video frames. Everything happens in a heartbeat in a collision, and padding is pretty cheap, all things considered.

Electric Lizard

The airbag comments are interesting. Does either of the front airbags deactivate when race seats are installed? Why do the side bags deactivate? Is there a way to override the deactivation (assuming that it is a good idea)?

todinlaw

Greg in the 997 GT3 the thorax bags are mounted in the stock seat so You lose that for sure with the racing seats. on the drivers air bag should be good to go, but in the gt3 the passenger seat has a sensor to de power the air bag if a child is in the set. when you unplug the sensor when you remove the stock seat an warning light comes on saying that the passenger bag is disabled. We can go to the dealer to get the warning light programed off, but bluntly, I do not know if that just turns off the light or if the bag still functions and the warning light is what gets disabled. I am going to get mine reprogrammed in a week or two and will find that out for myself. All of the above my not apply to other cars configurations.