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safe way for harness?

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Old 09-11-2003, 01:49 PM
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1stGenCRXer
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Let's not also forget that for autocrossing, using harness bars is ok. For track events, they usually don't allow you to use harnesses unless your car has a full cage.

That said, the ONLY places to mount a harness bar [and, coincidentally the only place honest harness bars mount] is to exsisting seatbelt mounting points. If you've ever had the chance to look at how seatbelt mounting points are reinforced in a unibody, you'd see that there is a whole lot of metal, and a whole lot of material that the bolts thread into at those points. A strut tower brace is NOT designed to take the kind of stresses a seatbelt can inflict on those areas, and usually rips the mount clear out of the sheet metal, due to lack of material, with the stress being spread over too small of an area.

What's this mean to you and me? If you hit something, the car stops, the bolts rip out, your harness is no longer holding you, and you continue to move into the steering wheel, dash, windsheild, etc.

A well designed harness bar will tie into upper and lower seatbelt mounting points, like Rick has shown, at either the B, or C pillars of the unibody. If your car doesn't have a back seat, you don't have a C-pillar mounting location in all likely hood. Also, if you have a 90-91 CRX, you don't even have a B-pillar mounting location for a harness bar.

Again, for track events, where speeds are higher, most sanctioning bodies will not allow the use of harnesses without a cage, because a harness is designed to keep your body in an upright position, and in the event of a roll-over, your car may not support the weight when resting on it's top, making you more subject to serious injury, or death.

Don't cut corners on safety. Ever.
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