Full containment seats, Looking for lateral impact solutions Options

[ThePaintedMan]

So, with all the benefits of using a small car for racing, including costs, consumables, etc, the safety risk has always been the biggest downfall. Physics/inertia is always something that's hard to overcome. On top of that, it's damn hard to get enough room in any of these cars just to keep your head away from solid things, let alone getting comfortable.

Since we're doing endurance racing, it was important for me to preserve the ability to give different size drivers some adjustability. After driving different cars, I know that it's important from a safety standpoint to get properly seated in the car, but also for stamina - bracing one's self properly is something we don't often think about but important, especially when doing 1.5+ hours in the car. Currently my solution isn't elegant at all - it's a stock seat, modified as best I could with additional aluminum bracing and bolsters, with a seatback brace and holes for the harnesses mounted to the stock seat sliders so we could adjust for different size drivers. But it works remarkably well.

In the future I am considering moving to a side-mount, proper race seat, if nothing else for safety concerns. I would really like to retain the ability to slide the seat for and aft, and I think that is something that can still be accomplished with most seats. However, the new trend is full containment seats to protect the head/neck in lateral impacts. But the problem is, in just about every 914 I've seen, it would be near impossible to fit a full containment seat in the car with a cage and still expect the driver to get themselves in/out of the car in any kind of reasonable time if a fire were to occur.

Just curious if any of you have given any thought to this or come up with a solution. I'm assuming this is just one of those compromises that we have to make with these cars. The only other solution I've come across is a detachable passenger side restraint net, seen in a lot of the professional cars now. But I still don't think that is really intended to fully brace a helmet in a side impact.

[Cracker]

George,

My car had a CF OMP halo seat in it when I bought it - in a stupid moment, I gave it back to my friend/seller since I had no use for it. It was way to intrusive and uncomfortable for me to use. It greatly blocks vision. My suggestion (which I've done) is to install Safecracft window and center cockpit nets. Just food for thought...I'm assuming you are using a HANS (like) device...

Tony

[ThePaintedMan]

Thanks Tony. That's exactly what I was looking for. I thought that a safecraft/sparco side net would be the ideal solution. I hate making compromises in terms of safety, but in this case, I think it's the only option. The ingress/egress speed is almost as much of a concern for me as getting hit in the side. Some impacts are going to be nasty regardless of what kind of protection one has - but getting stuck in a car that's on fire scares the living bejesus out of me.

[andrew15]

We've got an OMP HTE-XL containment seat in our chumpcar - I'll get some pics later

It's really comfortable, but fit was a somewhat tight fit for the car- right now it's mounted directly to floor with no sliders. We plan on installing sliders, but we found a fixed position that works for most.

It's a bit tighter to exit through the window than the old Sparco Evo L, but isn't a huge issue.

We run the car with no roof and for some it's a bit easier just to climb over the cage and and drop into the seat