duffman13

JB34,

No problem. Do you have the Safety21 with the harness bar? In that case you should only need the harness, seat, and mount. If you did a non-FIA seat, G-Force FIA harness, and PCI mount, you can have it done for $6-700 a side and it is wholly reversible.

Though I will caution - Most track day orgs have a requirement that driver and passenger have equal safety equipment if you still receive instruction. At the very least it's at the discretion of the instructor, and many won't get into a car where they get less protection.

freq

^^^^^^

I was once there with a Safety 21 roll bar. You won't safely be able to add a 6 point harness with that bar.

All the angles are wrong for shoulder harnesses.

DavidNJ

If the car has the bar and the seat, there are lots of shop (ask the Spec Miata racers in your area) who can make and weld in a harness bar.

The idea of having a seat on a fixed mount that is just bolted in and out to replace the OEM seat for track weekends sounds like a good idea. The sub-straps (the Schroth Hybrid 7-point seems like a good way to go) mounted to the seat mount makes it quicker and safer. Is there a way to have the harness lap belts attached to the seat mount? Another mount similar to the PCI is the Planted Technology.

I believe, at least with 7-point belts, the 2 crotch straps are supposed to be mounted to the seat under the driver. They keep the driver from submarining but don't have that high a load. The 7th strap, now called a negative-g strap, would be connected as usual. I'm not sure all the sanctioning bodies are on-board with that, but with the 7th strap they shouldn't care.

The FIA 8858-1999 seat certification is all over the place, but unless your seat is from a garage in China it shouldn't matter. The serious standard is 8862-2009 and the seats are very expensive and a bit bigger because of the reinforcements.

duffman13

The Planted mount doesn't come with holes to mount the sub belts to, which is the main difference between that and the PCI, meaning you would have to hard mount them to the floor boards. Also, the planted mount still requires you to buy side brackets, while the PCI comes with them so you'll be spending more money overall.

As for harness mounting, on the inboard lap belt, you can easily bolt that to the tab that the factory belt receptacle is supposed to go. Outboard, I would use one of the bendable bracket that Schroth sells at the factory seat belt mount. I've tried an eye bolt there but it interferes with the rear of my outboard slider, though it may fit with something like a PCI or planted mount. I have Buddy Club rails right now, but I'm considering moving to a different solution because I don't feel safe with them given all I've seen/read.

thomsbrain

Only issue with swapping in/out all the time is you still have to unbolt the stock seatbelt to feed it through the harness hole on the race seat for the drives to/from the track. And you'd either need two buckles (one for each seat), or have to swap those every time, too. I guess if you were commuting in the car and had to wear a suit, it might be worth swapping.

duffman13

I gathered if he's doing the swap hes using harnesses too. I know in my case, it only takes as long as routing the straps and clipping in the lap belts to my eye bolts

thomsbrain

Right, but does that mean he's going to wear the harnesses on the drive to the track? I'd still want my stock belt for that drive.

duffman13

That makes the install and routing of the harnesses immensely annoying. Plus you're going to have issues mounting the inboard harness with the buckle in place.

I do 2 hour drives to summit point and NJMP and 4.5 hour drives to VIR wearing harnesses without issue. If you really have a concern about it, buy Schroth Profi ASM harnesses. You can still add the crotch strap to them, and the breakaway portion will allow your body to move in a crash and let the airbag do its thing.

If it's about parking lot speeds, I just loosen the shoulder straps while I'm in a lot so i can look around better and tighten them back up when I'm on a main road.

JB34

So Duffman...I took your lead and made a call to Corbeau yesterday. They informed me that many of their seats (including your FX1) is compatible with stock seat belts for street driving. I'm curious why you need to swap it out rather than simply replacing the stock seats? Ingress and egress issues? I also noticed that their Forza Sport is FIA approved and they tell me is should fit our cars too. See any problems with that seat?

duffman13

A few reasons:

1. Ingress and egress is annoying with the buckets - they're high on the sides so you end up essentially falling into the car. It's super annoying with the top up. For the record, the Corbeaus have fairly low thigh bolsters too compared to some other options.
2. The shoulder wings limit mobility within the vehicle for me (I lift enough that I'm wide up there).
3. There really isn't enough room to run the inboard strap and the seat belt receptacle simultaneously, and if you do the routing on the lower part of the lap belt as well it interferes with the ourboard lap belt strap too. That would mean any time you want to use harnesses, you would have to pull the seats , remove the receptacle, and route the lap belts anytime you want to use the harnesses.
4. The last part is cosmetic - my wife hates sitting in the buckets, and I hate the way the car looks with mismatched seats, so I do what I think looks nicer.