That's a hard hit! Glad your OK Greg!
Can we get more specific detail of what safety equip was used?

A few questions:
- The seat looks way out of place, was it mounted through the floor? If so, did the floor deform that much or did the seat rip loose?
- What type of helmet/neck restraint/harness setup? I'd say it performed well considering no halo/shoulder restraint seat, but any recommended changes?
- Was the bolt-in cage mounted to welded bases on the door sills or sandwich plates in the floor?
- Was there any cabin deformity at leg level that might have caused injury? In other words, would a lower horizontal support from cage to left heel area (like Jim's car has) have made a difference?

Hi Gary,

I have to get a answer from Art regarding the seat since he's the one that's dismantling it.
I think I have an idea but want to confirm.

Helmet was a Bell M3, head/neck restraint was a R3. It perform very well since Greg has no neck pains and in fact went in to work for a half day today.
If you want a break down of head/neck restraint systems in our group.

Greg, Jerry, Ron and myself use the Safety Solutions R3 type system.
Steve, Sid, Aubie, Rick use the HANS.

I'm going to look at halo and shoulder systems.

The bolt-in cage which I confirm is a Autopower was mounted to the floor with sandwich plates. There was no cabin deformity at leg level that I can see so I can't comment on the lower horizontal support.

That is an older Autopower bolt in cage with ERW tubing that was grandfathered in. The tube on that is around 1 3/4" if I am not mistaken and now the DOM is only 1 1/2". This cage didn't even have the additional front knee bar and it held up very well. I have heard the Nascar door bars is a good thing to have since it gives you additional distance before body contact. Also easier to get in and out of the car but you have to cut up your door in order to have this feature.

If anyone knows about safety, I believe Jim Foxx is the guy you should listen to. His posting will tell you pretty much everything you should or need to know about protection.

JerryW wrote:


I like the leg padding idea shown there - I'll be looking into doing that, as well.

I spoke to Art yesterday.
There was no failure of the seat attachment with the bolts and backing plates.
The floor by the left rear seat bolt did deform and was depressed down about half a inch. That's the reason the seat points out towards the left.
Don't know if this cause Greg's head to contact the top of the roll cage to knock him out. Greg said there was no markings on his helmet.

This goes back to my first post where Jim Foxx recommends the seat mount to supports that are attached to the tunnel and the side frame rails.
I have thought about this before this incident and the reason why I ask Cullen or Chuck to get pictures of Hanksville's seat mount fabrication in this forum thread.

Hey guys,
After some lengthy discussions with a very experienced racer and car builder, I'm no longer supplying CRE built cars with a NASA legal roll cage. I'm building up the cars with what we call a "crash cage." It's way more than the rules minimums call for. We don't build them planning on the driver surviving only a high speed roll over, but rather, a high speed, multiple impact crash.
Everett Delano and Chris Allen in SoCal have both updated or replaced their cages with this idea in mind.
Yes, get the good roll cage padding and cover every bit of the cage you could possibly come into contact with. Arms, legs,ankles, knees, head.
I think the newer seats with the side head restraints are far superior to the inside net system alternative. The only short coming of the newer seats built to FIA rule 8855-1999 is that they don't need a seat back brace. The seat is MEANT to flex and absorb some of the crash energy. The problem is that if the seat rails or floor fail, the seat and driver can get stuffed under the horizontal bar of the cage in a hard rear impact. The shoulder belt holes make a nice weak spot in the seat so that it folds right there. My idea, which I've talked about before, is to build a wall of sheet steel straight down from the horizontal cage bar to the front edge of the rear seat area. This would be far enough away from the seat to give it room to flex, but it would also provide a solid barrier to the rear with enough surface area to keep the seat in one piece. One couldn't argue that this stiffens the chassis since it's already within the main hoop of the cage. There would need to be breaks at the top of this wall to mount the shoulder harnesses to the horizontal bar.
Can anyone see a problem with anything I've said so far?