almost heaven

I'm planning on making my FB street car into a dual purpose track car, and would like to use race seats with side head restraints (and of course also the requisite 6 pt cage). I have been told the problems associated with a cage in a street car. My question is would hte head restraints on the race seats block too much of my side vision to be practical? Thanks.

Black91n/a

I wouldn't worry so much about vision (just lean forward, since you'll need to keep the 3 points for legal reasons), I'd worry about if you get in a crash and move forward, then your head shifts sideways and recoils into the front of the head restraint.

Gene

iTrader: (1)

If you get aluminum seats like Kirkey or Ultra Shield you can easily remove the head wings, they just bolt on AFAIK.

sixfourbolt

I agree with Gene...you'll be good to go that way bro.

Black91n/a

No, those head restraints are terribly weak. I've got a video of one just folding away upon impact. I wouldn't even bother, they'd just get in the way, then provide little to no extra protection.

Shainiac

iTrader: (7)

^+1
I got to see a video about cage, seat, and harness safety made by Bill Simson a few months ago. The slow-mo video of a side impact wreck with a crash dummy showed its head bending the little wings out of the way. This is with a Kirkey-style sheet aluminum seat. Head supports made with tubing like those in NASCAR would probably work better.

Gene

iTrader: (1)

Yikes.

gracer7-rx7

iTrader: (16)

So head restraints in general are weak or those on the Kirkey aluminum seats are weak?

Shainiac

iTrader: (7)

Here these are the ones I was referring to.
http://store.summitracing.com/partde...5&autoview=sku
They are simply sheet metal.

Here are some nice tubular restraints
http://www.joieofseating.net/images/...hipping_1b.jpg

Chedstar

Bottom line, a lot or racing safety equipment is not practical or even safe to have on the street. I would think your are just asking for trouble with head restraints on a street car. In a race car there is not much merging or having to worry about a car coming at you 90 degrees to your direction of travel, so your view out the side windows is not critical. The exact opposite is true in a street car, the restraints are going to block your vision out the side windows.

Shainiac

iTrader: (7)

Not to mention that you wont have a helmet on when driving on the street.
Any impact with the head restraint would probably do more bad than good in a crash.

Black91n/a

Yea, it's those sheet metal ones that bend. If you were to weld some reinforcing ribs to them they might be pretty good, but then I'd worry about the seat back/head rest simply tiwisting at that point since they weren't designed to take those loads.