Keith:
As always good to hear from you.
Roll bar and cage design is critical as it is easy to build entrapment
into the devices.
I co-drove a pro-rally car once that had side intrusion bars, but the
inner door panels had been later cut out. The natural place to rest
your arm was over the intrusion bar, meaning that if the outer door
panel was impacted there was a high likelihood that your arm would be
trapped between the bar and outer panel. Nasty!
Hopefully this winter I will have a chance to update the structure in my
65B as tech wants a better head restraint system, and I figured that was
a good time to install the front legs of a Safety Devices cage. The
problem is that the legs don't come anywhere near to fitting tightly to
the windshield frame, so some bending is going to be necessary. Joy!
The comment on seats is also important, as another car I co-drove in had
a stock bucket for the co-driver, but a high quality racing seat for the
driver. On a later event the stock bucket seat failed during a roll
over incident and the co-driver was concussed. At that time I'm sure
the driver would have been happy to have changed his nifty racer seat
for that of the co-driver who was left unconscious in an upside down
burning car.
Kelvin Dodd
> -----Original Message-----
> From: kmwheeler@ualr.edu [mailto:kmwheeler@ualr.edu]
> Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 11:08 AM
> To: Dodd, Kelvin; mgs@autox.team.net
> Subject: Roll bars and such
>
> Or use proper roll cage padding. Or Paddington. I once had a
Paddington
> bear strapped
> to the roll cage of the rally car, just in case. <jk>
>
> But yeah, sudden impact on roll cage material is bad indeed. I've
seen a
> couple of older
> incidents where guys broke their thighs (ouch ouch and potentially
dead-
> real-fast if you cut
> that artery) in fairly minor shunts because their leg hit the side
impact
> bars. (Side note: it is
> VERY difficult to research the history of racing crashes. Outside of
some
> famous events, most
> are quickly covered up by the sanctioning bodies...)
>
> I run with roll bars/cages in most of my street machinery (because
it's
> mostly dual-purpose).
> I make sure that: 1) proper padding is applied 2) proper seats are
used,
> and 3) proper
> harnesses. Of course the helmet is the big thing, I remember a couple
of
> rally guys that
> got killed in Cali while "practicing" on some back roads. They were
done
> for the day, took
> their helmets off, and hit some civilian traffic...
>
> My 'B V8's roll bar is not finished. It will be 1) slightly taller
than
> the typcial "street bar" (though at
> 5'5" I don't need it that high) 2) have a diagonal and a harness bar,
and
> 3) have side impact
> bars with proper padding.
>
> For the most part, roll bars in street cars just look cool. They
looked
> cool in the 60s when our
> old MGs were new and they still look cool in the Miatas et al. Of
course
> the people who just want
> to look cool don't want that ugly padding. Oh well.
>
> Safety fast,
>
> -Keith Wheeler
> Team Sanctuary
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