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- - Roll bar padding (https://www.miataturbo.net/general-miata-chat-9/roll-bar-padding-4779/)

Quote:

Originally Posted by HHammerly (Post 977808)

You are correct; My apology for a badly worded paragraph, and a mobile devise is no excuse.
My brother backed his NA into a tree going 40-+ a couple years ago, he and a passenger were wearing seat belts. The kerky seat he was seating on and the oem seat that his passenger was seating on flexed backwards about 30 deg at the tray line and would have put their heads directly under a roll bar if so equipped.
Cars belts and people flex and stretch far more that one may think on a hard impact.
He probably would have been seriously injured if the car had a roll bar on, I padded my roll bar and put on a 5 PT harness the following week.
A roll bar most likely will save your life but it can be dangerous if the driver is not restrained and roll bar not padded properly when driving without a helmet.
I'll see if I can dig out some photos of his head and the car.

Well, the problem is that he had an aluminum shell seat (Kirkey) and didn't brace it to a rollbar. Its horrendously unsafe to run an aluminum seat without bracing - the seat will pretzel in an accident exactly as happened to your brother.

See here: Seat Back Brace - Frequently Asked Questions

I believe it means the driver was in a Kirkey and the passenger was in an OEM seat. I went ahead and bought Hard Dog's own SFI padding when I bought my rollbar. Seats flex pretty badly when you get hit from behind.

I agree that the aluminum seat needs bracing to be safe for racing, In this case the aluminum and OEM seats failed in the the same fashion.
My opinion that if a roll bar is installed it has to be as far away from my head as possible with good restraints and proper padding.
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1360632149
My memory failed me, it has been a little longer than 2 years and the oem passenger seat actually is bent further than the kerky seat.
I don't have a good photo but it can be seen on this photo
http://i1084.photobucket.com/albums/...B0B284171B.jpg

I have a double diagonal roll bar for the project car I'm building, because of this accident I will mount the seats on the floor with no tracks to get more clearance + seat bracing and at least a four point harness for street use. I can add arm restraints and leg straps for track days. I'll get seats with more padding too, i'm not sure if my scalp got cut by the back of the seat or by the convertible top cross bar.
The seat adapter bracket we made for the drivers side got bent and so did the seat back but in this case that was a good thing, both seats absorbed a lot of energy.

Thanks for editing that for clarification, HHammerly. Brutal car carnage. :(

Quote:

Originally Posted by brgracer (Post 45479)

Granted some padding is better than no padding, but SFI padding is meant to protect the driver's head in conjunction with a helmet. It wasn't designed to protect the bare head.

People make the arguement that if your car is not a track car then the risk of a rear-end accident where you bean yourself on the rollbar is much higher than rolling over. That said, I don't think I've ever heard of anyone dying from hitting their head on the rollbar from a rear-end accident whereas people have surely died from rolling.

IMHO rollbar (in general) is safer than no rollbar, especially if as you say your head comes nowhere near it. Granted a high velocity rear impact might do it, but I'd think that most rear end accidents would not do it, plus a concussion is much better than being dead.

On another note, very few (if any) 6 point harnesses are DOT approved, but the cop would really have to be an a-hole to give you a ticket for that.

As mentioned as well, I wouldn't run a roll bar on the street without fixed backs and harnesses, just like I do on track.

Schroth makes a 4 pt that is DOT approved and has some special "anti-submarine" technology to make up for no sub belt.

The SFI 45.1 spec encompasses two areas -- impact resistance (high density foam) and flame resistance.

Something to consider -- the original SFI 45.1 specfication specified an UN-helmeted headform. The current one does not specify either, and I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about head trauma to know what would happen w/o a helmet with the type of impact that they test -- http://www.sfifoundation.com/Spec_45.1_081105.pdf

There is dual density padding available. This is SFI 45.1 padding against the rollbar with a softer padding on the outside for your noggin or other tender parts. Having been rear-ended with this, I can say that it's definitely better than straight 45.1 padding.