land-speed
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RE: seat padding

To: "'Dave Dahlgren'" <ddahlgren@snet.net>,
Subject: RE: seat padding
From: "Albaugh, Neil" <albaugh_neil@ti.com>
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 12:30:23 -0500
Dave;

I think you are right and I suspect the idea behind the 1" max foam seat pad
is to maintain the effectiveness of the safety harness in the event of a
crash.

If a driver is sitting on a thick, low-density pad, tightening his safety
harness will pull him back into the rigid seat only a little-- there is such
a large surface area that the belt tension doesn't compress the foam all
that much. In a hard crash, however, where the driver may be subjected to
many, many "Gs", the foam does get compressed and then the safety harness
goes slack-- not good!

Two other considerations seem worty of mention. First, the flammibility of
the material. You don't want to be vulcanized into your seat in case of a
cockpit fire. Second, a driver doesn't have much "feel" of what the car is
doing if he is sitting on a "feather pillow".

Regards, Neil     Tucson, AZ


-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Dahlgren [mailto:ddahlgren@snet.net] 
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 9:42 AM
To: Glen Barrett
Cc: Keith Turk; landspeed@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: seat padding


The 1" foam rule seems a little odd in that in 1" it seems pretty hard to
get it to contour to the back correctly. I would think the real issue is ,
is it high density foam or something from a housewares section of a
department store. Seats with greater than 1" I would think be used all the
time in the sports car racing because of fitting different drivers to the
same car. Dave

Glen Barrett wrote:
> 
> The new rule book has a full page ad on Jaz products and one of the 
> items is seat padding. 20" X 10" X 1" It's the same material as the 
> the SFI roll bar padding.  phone  800-525- 8133 www.jazproducts.com
> 
> Glen

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