Lets see your aftermarket seats!

wstar

Unfortunately, the simple truth (which we could have pages and pages and pages of in-depth discussion about, but...) is that safety system conversions are best thought of as a binary proposition. Either you leave it all stock, or you go straight to stripping out the stock airbags/belts/seats, installing a full 6-point cage, 6-point harnesses, and fixed racing buckets (and always wearing a helmet, and maybe a neck device as well).

I wish it weren't the case, I fought a lot with wanting various halfway options as my car progressed, but there's always a big safety downside to any halfway solution that tries to mix the stock and racing configs. The only halfway option I did before I went all out was using some reclinable semi-racing seats with high bolsters (tradeoff was loss of side airbag, not huge), while still using the stock belts.

Not really true. It will be rougher than stock on you, but even racing harnesses do flex and stretch under impact loads (I've seen figures as high as 12" of stretch movement quoted somewhere, in a direct high-speed frontal hit). Almost everything flexes and stretches to some degree in an impact, even sheet metal and "fixed" seats. The notable exception is the rollcage itself (or anything else equally stout, but on a lightweight race car there won't be much else).

Just keep in mind that even wrapping in foam doesn't protect your bare head from a cage. The right kind of foam for cages is high-density stuff, which is designed to make your helmet less likely to crack, but still feels pretty much hard as a rock and will still damage your head pretty badly without a helmet. The wrong kind of foam (the soft stuff like a pool noodle that you see people use on Jeeps and whatnot) will protect your bare head when you accidentally bang into the bar getting in and out of the car, but may as well be a sheet of paper if you impact the bar with your head in a wreck.

Even the lower bars of the cage near the footwell are dangerous - your legs flopping around in a wreck can break a lower legbone against one if you don't at least pad them. On real race cars I've seen them just line the outside of the footwell with a big solid sheet of aluminum and/or a big fat high-density pad to prevent that. Cage bars simply don't give at all, so whatever hits them has to break.

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Journal thread / Car setup details