Seat rear mounting point unsafe

[eckeph]

As I written in other threads, I'm going to put a real bucket seat in my ACR. Today I removed the stock seat and started to poke around. The good news is that I think the OMP seats I found will fit if I shift the seat 20mm towards the transmission tunnel (y) The bad news is that, imo, the rear mounting point for the seat is really, really weak! Remember that this is the place that will take up most of the forces in a collision due to that both the lower and the waist belt is connected to these two points.

What I found was that there are just two bolts going through the flimsy floor. No reinforcements of any kind. I can even move the bolts from side to side using my hands!!! These will rip straight out of the floor in a collision and you will get all the force on your shoulders. What's the point of a 6-point harness when only two of them are fastened properly to the car? Actually, this is even worse if you use the stock 3-point seatbelt since if the seat comes loose, you don't have any seatbelt anymore...

This needs to be addressed in some way. I just need to figure out how. I fear that I need to open up the floor that covers the bolt heads from the underside and add some heavy duty steel plate to spread the load.

Is there not anyone else that have seen this and addressed the problem? I cannot imagine driving around on track with such unsafe seatbelt mounting.

[Ronin47]

Are you talking about the stock seat? If so teamtech has a harness bar you can bolt on the seat rail for a secure mount.

[eckeph]

Are you talking about the stock seat? If so teamtech has a harness bar you can bolt on the seat rail for a secure mount.

No, I'm talking about the bolts that goes through the _thin_ floor. The ones that holds that bar in place.

[eckeph]

You are absolutely correct eckeph and we corrected all these problems you have pointed out with our racing seat kit


Ohh, you have? Did you add plates under the floor to strengthen the point where the bolts goes through the floor? Or how did you do it?

[eckeph]

We actually manufacture a complete new lap belt mounting bracket. Its uses the 2 original seat mount studs and then we added 2 more bolts that have washer plates bilt in. Its does require you drill 2 more holes for the added fasteners. We also use double shear bolt in harnesses only. This is the same setup we use in our Viper GT3R cars and very similar to all our race car builds so its proven over many years.

Ahh, that's nice! Good to know that someone is taking safety seriously! I must say that I got quite surprised by the discovery. Especially since I seen nothing about it being a problem previously. This should be number one on everyone's list if they want to track their car. Even if they are running stock 3-point seatbelts. Or maybe _especially_ if they are running 3-point seatbelts!

[Pappy]

As I written in other threads, I'm going to put a real bucket seat in my ACR. Today I removed the stock seat and started to poke around. The good news is that I think the OMP seats I found will fit if I shift the seat 20mm towards the transmission tunnel (y) The bad news is that, imo, the rear mounting point for the seat is really, really weak! Remember that this is the place that will take up most of the forces in a collision due to that both the lower and the waist belt is connected to these two points.

What I found was that there are just two bolts going through the flimsy floor. No reinforcements of any kind. I can even move the bolts from side to side using my hands!!! These will rip straight out of the floor in a collision and you will get all the force on your shoulders. What's the point of a 6-point harness when only two of them are fastened properly to the car? Actually, this is even worse if you use the stock 3-point seatbelt since if the seat comes loose, you don't have any seatbelt anymore...

This needs to be addressed in some way. I just need to figure out how. I fear that I need to open up the floor that covers the bolt heads from the underside and add some heavy duty steel plate to spread the load.

Is there not anyone else that have seen this and addressed the problem? I cannot imagine driving around on track with such unsafe seatbelt mounting.[/QUOTE]

This isn't exactly apples-to-apples and I really hate posting photos of "in-progress" construction shots, but this info may be relevant. I ran into the same problem with this non-Viper project. The original seats bolted to inserts in the fiberglass floor. I ended up locating suitable places under the floor where I could weld tabs to the frame with deep nut inserts for 3/8 bolts. I then heavily modified the OMP seat brackets (mostly to take some of the weight out of them) to fit an OMP HTE-R carbon seat. I know this may be a bit of a drastic approach, but there may be places under the Viper floorboard where you could bolt in a steel support to accomplish the same thing (to minimize alterations to your car). Good luck.

Pappy

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