Harnesses Round Due

[Greg Mercurio]

Atsa Italian for two.

In the latest Sports Car, Ken Brown went to great lengths to set the stage for a change in rules to a 2 year replacment period for our harnesses. Good thing for authors with a captive audience that he didn't let facts get in the way of a good story. Wait, that's the NY Times gig!

I'm not sure, but Florida sun through glass is possibly the best way to do an accelerated aging test, due to it's proximity to the equator, it's 360+ days of sunshine, and extreme summers. If I were PPG, I'd sure send my paint samples there for weathering tests. So did DuPont, for their web tests.

The arithmetic is easy for a 7 year old with a calculator:

24 months times 30 days per month times 12 hours per day equals 8640 hours of exposure allowed by the SCCA article and soon to be new replacement standard.

So as an rabid racer, I leave my car uncovered for about 36 hours per month, the balance of the time it's in the trailer or covered with a UV blocking cover. For me, the arithmetic is easy also, 8640 hours/36 hours per month = 240 months or 20 years. What the.....? What happened to the other 238 months!

Yet another case of finessing the facts to match the goal. NOT reporting some critical factual data and the story becomes almost good enough to sell.

Whatever your position is on harness replacement intervals, demand real world data to support the position. SCCA and Ken Brown did not make a case as far as I can see.

[EYERACE]

yo greg......only now you have awoken....good....you are awake.....this crimp in the middle of your gluteus maximus has been on the way to your address for the last four or five months...read more elsewhere here and at f2000....please raise hel with 'em

[Chester Carter]

Good post greg. Here is just a few random thoughts. Does anyone know what the milspec is for replacement of safety harnesses in military war planes? Ditto for the harnesses on the nukey subs. Yes they do use harnesses. What is the normal replacement criteria for FAA aproved parachutes? I would be willing to bet that our "my" goverment has done extensive research on just this subject. And has anyone actually seen or witnessed a fabric failure in a harness. With all due respect to the powers that be at SCCA I think maybe a little common sense should be mustered up. If I were a car salesman I would lobby for all cars to be thrown out after three years. Just for safety of course, not to pump my sales. Still hanging from the grape vines in the Napa Valley. Chet Carter #29 sf SF region.

[Andy Chu]

Maybe Bill Simpson is giving kickbacks to fund the new company!

Just kidding...I love my Simpson belts. (He was still there when I bought them)

[Roland Johnson]

I don't think Bill Simpson would make any kick backs, but I think that economics plays a big part in this two year quest. I think that the people who certify belts in this country make their money on that process. New belts every two years make them much more money. I asked SCCA National to give me any hard data on belt failures when the five year rule went into effect. I still havn't heard from them. This proposed two year rule is just the sort of BS that's driving people away from SCCA.

[Dave]

Here's my post over on the FC side.

http://www.apexspeed.com/cgi-bin/ult...033;p=1#000031

Basically, on the airliners I work, we change belts and harnessess on-condition.

As far as I'm concerned, someone is out to sell more belts. End of story.

[Chester Carter]

I was hoping that someone involved with the military or FAA would chime in with the answer I was looking for. It is my understanding that safety harnesses in fighter planes are examined on a regular basis and only discarded if physically damaged or fail a visual ie faded,chemically damaged etc. Since we invest roughly six million dollars training a fighter pilot and than plunking him into a hundred million dollar plane, don't you think they have his best interest at heart. I watched the navy fly phantoms and other asst planes off of an aircraft carrier for two years and never saw a safety belt replaced in all that time. I for one see no reason that the owner could not perform this same examination, followed by the normal annual inspection performed by tech. I am sure that most of you are a harsher critic of your safety equipment than any tech inspector. If there was any emperical evidence to support SCCA on this issue that would be one thing. Techno babble by someone with a degree in political science is another. If someone were to start a petition to rescind this bs. I'll sign on.
Chet Carter SF region.

[Murray]

Get a grip guys. Cars are not airplanes. The belts in planes are intended to hold the pilot in place during flight. They are not intended for crash protection. The kind of G loads needed for crash protection in a car far exceed that the aircraft structure can provide. While the two-year requirement may be too stringent, the aircraft analogy does not fly.

[Frank C]

Murray:
In regard to aircraft belts, I believe that the difference between "holding in place" and "crash" protection are rather semantic and subjective. I have toured the FAA lab at the Monroney Center in Oklahoma City that does aircraft belt testing and seen videos of the tests. They use sled tests, and the impacts involved are dramatic. I am sure the researchers performing these tests would say that they were simulating crashes. Flying into a mountain is one sort of crash, and a very bad landing is another.
- Frank C

P.S. The researcher leading the tour offered the opinion that the seats facing cabin partitions are, from a crash safety standpoint, the worst choices.

[Dave]

Not so many years ago all the pax seats, on all airliners were replaced with 16g seats, and people wonder why an airline ticket costs so much. Those fancy new terrorist-proof doors? $25,000 each.

Here's some interesting reading.

http://www.mcmc-law.com/thecrashworthine.html

Fact remains, the article on harness testing and useful life of the harness is flawed.

According to it, IF we live in Florida or IF we live in Arizona and IF we leave our cars outside and uncovered 24/7 THEN we must replace our belts every 2 years.

My car and my harness do not meet any of these criteria. Five year replacement is fine and has been for many years. Two year replacements is lining some pockets.

[Frank C]

I reviewed Ken Brown's article on harnesses carefully and sent a critique to him, Johnson, the BOD, and the Comp Board (Write your own - it is easy to send to the boards). I, too, found the article presented a very narrow and poorly considered view of belt life. For the most part, it ignored the entire history of testing done for street cars, military, and civilian aircraft and concentrated on one set of test data from DuPont. There even are some suspicious things in that data. Table 1 shows that 1.75 inch wide belts degrade much more than 3 inch wide belts - edge effects? The first table on page 34 shows that black nylon belts degrade much more than blue- or parchment-colored belts, particularly when tested at 10.6 months. Perhaps SCCA should be telling us that we must use blue belts! I think a much more careful review is needed to justify changes in rules on belt life.
- Frank C

[size="1"][ June 10, 2003, 01:01 AM: Message edited by: Frank C ][/size]

[Dave]

Something just occured to me while reading Frank C's posting. What affect will this change in the rules regarding the purchase of required and verifiable equipment, like belts, have on the purchase of parts that aren't dated and checked? Things like rod-ends or bearings?

Will there be a trackable increase in rod-end failures?

Will SCCA be able to spot the trend in rod-end failures and make changes like they want to do with belts?

[Rick Kirchner]

With respect to aircraft belt requirements - there's a couple of things we design to:

Catapult launches and arrested landings. Not to mention the occasional catastrophic in-flight failure.

Aircraft belts also se this ona much more cyclical basis, which probably makes a big difference. Climbers know that a rope is rated for X number of falls. After that, it will either break you or break itself.

[Michael Bowen]

I ended up reading the article 3 times. Then I began to think. The race car lives in a garage in relative comfort. But the road cars!!! I live in Texas, have 2 road cars with original OEM belts, one is 23 years old, and the other is 13, and they spend a lot of time in the sun, humidity, and heat. Per this article, their totally worthless and should be dry rotting, especially the 23 year old car. But they’re not.

Also, if this was a significant problem, we'd be hearing about law suits, corporate finger pointing, and horror stories in the media of injured or killed drivers, children, and passengers due to failing safety belts not unlike the Firestone debacle. This would most likely result in large settlements, including factory replacement recommendations being plastered all over belts and owner manuals, possible recalls, and maybe even certain states like, say Florida, requiring regular replacement in order to renew a safety inspection.

But….. and I believe this is very significant, we haven’t….Why?? Because the problem, if there is really a problem, isn’t as bad as this article wants us to believe. If belts became ineffective so fast, we would have discovered this a long time ago from the tens of millions of belts currently in circulation in road cars.

[R. Pare]

There are 2 forces at work here (maybe 3) -

1 - Liability lawyers. Someone got to playing the "what if" scenario game, and convinced others that "something needs to be done".

2 - The 2 years rule will raise the sales of the belt manufacturers 250%, effective immediately, compared to the 5 year rule. And they know it.

3 - Scientific and technical incompetancy on the part of those advising the powers at SCCA HQ, and the same for those making the decisions.

Dangerous scenario we've got here.

[EYERACE]

No one yet is telling us how much an entry fee would go up due to the increased insurance cost....i say we're only being told the part of the story that SCCA wants us to hear. if the premium went up $20.00 per event per entry then a club racer racing twice a year just to keep up a regional license would rather pay the $20.00 instead of replacing belts every fifth event