Re: 5 point Harness vendors

[Richard Welty <rwelty@domain.elided>]

On Wed, 12 Jun 2002 14:01:32 -0400 "Bain, Bill" <Bill.Bain@domain.elided> wrote:

> Racer's Wholesale here in Hot'lanta sells Sabelt 5 point camlocks for
> around
> $110 or so, G-force is about $150.  They're on the Web and local for me.
>  I
> have heard that some folks feel that Racers Wholesale may not sell belts
> with the freshest dates, but Russ Neely or Richard Welty, since they
> race,
> can probably fill in some details. 

there was an issue with Racer Wholesale and the Sabelts a few years back. i
can provide the issues so far as i understand them. i'm going to put the
most important points up front, so that i won't be misunderstood.

1) Racer Wholesale never sold an unsafe belt. every belt i have ever
inspected that came from them was in good, safe condition.

2) red belts (such as the Sabelts from Racer Wholesale) can be judged for
webbing by looking at the red dye; if it has started to go pink, then the
belts need to be replaced (this is a consequence of UV exposure; UV is what
kills the elasticity in the belts, and red dye fade is a good indicator of
of loss of elasticity.)

now, as to what happened with Racer Wholesale and Sabelt:

Sabelt dropped out of the US market for a time back in 1992. Racer
Wholesale found themselves with a warehouse full of undated Sabelts (the
date codes are on an SFI label that must be purchased by the belt
manufacturer or wholesaler.) 

Subsequent to this purchase, the SCCA imposed a belt aging rule, where
belts may be no older 5 years, based on the date code on the SFI label. if
memory serves, this rule was imposed in the 1995/1996 time frame -- i could
look it up in my historic SCCA GCR collection, if i could remember where it
is.

Racer Wholesale apparently didn't catch this rule change, and continued
selling the undated belts (indeed, quite a few were sold to SCCA
Enterprises and installed in new SCCA Spec Racers and subsequently resold
to SCCA members w/o the required dates.)

all these belts had SFI labels, but no date marking. they had an older form
of SFI label, which had a blank space for a date which was to be stamped
on the cloth label in ink.

more recent SFI lables have a row of months and a row of years, just like
the punch outs on a car battery, and a punch is to be used to indicate the
date in a manner similar to the usual car battery method.

after the date problem was brought to Racer Wholesale's attention, we
started seeing belts which had the old label, and the new label sewn over
the top of it with a single strand of thread. most other belts sew two or
four sides of the SFI label; the Sabelts from Racer Wholesale are unique in
this.

i'm fairly sure that all the belts with two labels (old style and new
style) were from the 1992 batch. since they were stored indoors, away from
UV, they were all pretty much safe belts regardless of the date code,
until UV and normal wear and tear took their toll.

new Sabelts from Racer Wholesale continue to have the label sewn on with
one thread. i think the 1992 batch is long since sold out, but i really
don't know for sure.

in any event, there are two separate issues:

1) i like red belts, because it's easy to judge the UV exposure thing

2) if you are racing with an organization that has a belt aging rule like
the SCCA, independently it is up to you to make sure that your belt vendor
is selling you belts that are properly labeled and dated. i have seen lots
of vendors selling 3 year old "new" belts, which only have only 2 years of
label based eligibility regardless of actual condition. these vendors need
to be beaten with sticks or other similar implements.

as a separate belt aging issue, FIA belts (as opposed to the more common
SFI belts in the US) have expiration dates rather than sale dates. these
are more commonly seen in formula cars built in europe.

it is common to buy new, SFI, dated belts and see dates that are in the
future. vendors often attempt to target the planned sale date when punching
out the labels. don't too upset over this if it happens to you.

other belt hints:

in an upright seating position, pull down lap belts are usually preferable
to pull up belts (pull up belts are for formula cars and sports racers.)

don't forget the anti sub strap. in an upright car, it's not really for
anti-sub purposes; its job is to keep the lap belt down over your hips.

inspect the belts for fraying where they rub on things frequently.

if you have an "incident", inspect the belts. in particular, inspect the
stitching around any sewn on labels (sewn on 2 or 4 sides, that is.) this
will give you some indication of potential belt stretch. if the belts
really stretched, they're done.

never mount belts with a steep down angle for the shoulder straps. this can
cause compression fractures to the spine in an incident. in other words,
don't drop long shoulder belts to the floor behind the seat. mount them
somewhere so that they will be no steeper than 45 degrees down. mounting to
a lateral bar in the plane of the main hoop of the roll cage at about
shoulder height is really best.

richard
--
Richard Welty                                         rwelty@domain.elided
Averill Park Networking                                         518-573-7592
              Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security
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