Need some street safety advice

[Doug1]

I need to know how to determine if this roll bar is going to be too close to the driver's and passenger's head. The seats will be here next week and are Corbeaus with a harness.

My primary concern is the danger of someone hitting their head on the cross bar running down underneath the t-top since it is non removable, while the car is street driven and no helmet is being used. I'll have removable side bars for auto-crossing and will have a helmet on when those are in. The center bars are my primary concern. Do they stay or do I take them and the front hoop out?

I've included some photos below to help understand what I am concerned about. Is there a measurement or other point of reference that one can use to determine how far away from the driver's head these bars need to be? Again, the seats will require a 4 or 5 point harness so the occupants should be somewhat secure. There will be no back seat of course.


http://i213.photobucket.com/albums/cc231/dcamburn/1979%20Trans%20Am%20-%20Blue/73A2CA0E-8B06-4DF5-864D-19B7B6897AED_zps3nzgh03h.jpg
http://i213.photobucket.com/albums/cc231/dcamburn/1979%20Trans%20Am%20-%20Blue/00902BE6-79CD-42CD-94F4-3498D0680F6D_zpsoue4ksjm.jpg
http://i213.photobucket.com/albums/cc231/dcamburn/1979%20Trans%20Am%20-%20Blue/80FDAB9F-CC37-4B29-ABAA-1857468EC590_zpsrglstlhr.jpg

[Ron Sutton]

IMHO, the center bars will be too close to your head, as well as the passenger's head. Without a helmet, that is a head injury or death just waiting for the right circumstances to occur.

If, you & your passenger always wear full 5/6 point harnesses ... tight ... you need any roll bar tubes to be a minimum of 6" away without a helmet. The exceptions to this would be:
* Where the headrest prevents your head from going back towards the main hoop
* If the seat was a full containment race seat, designed to limit side to side head movement.

Best wishes, Ron

[dontlifttoshift]

When you say side bars, are you talking about door bars or is there a removable bar tying the corners of the main hoop to the a pillar bar?

Is this just an autocross car or is there serious track time in the future?

[Vegas69]

That looks extremely dangerous for a street car. Pick which is more important. Race car or street car? Like most things in life, you can't have it all!:lol:

[XLexusTech]

i cant really see the clearance but it looks similar to mine...

Shoulder harness 5 point... for everyone..is a must have... other than that.. not much more you can do it you desire/need a cage..

Padding wont hurt.. pardon the pun..

[Doug1]

Thanks guys. Ron, I was hoping for your input. I'll put a tape measure to it this weekend using stock seats. The Corbeaus are LG1s and so they are not full containment.

The front hoop and connecting bars seemed like a great idea until I saw it after the fact. I want safety to be the primary factor and the car will not face serious track time. I wanted to build something that would be along the lines of the Optima Challenge cars. The fact of the matter is that the front hoop is going to cause me to spend thousands of dollars on a hand built dash because I can't get a stock one back in there. So there is sort of a silver lining to this cloud if I do need to take this out.