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.

 

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.

 

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

 

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

 

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.

 

^+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.

 

Yikes.

 

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

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.