#TrashTeg, The Chronicles; Part 3-- DIY Racecar Seat Back Brace

When we last left off regarding #TrashTeg, we discussed safety upgrades before an HPDE event.  In this blog post, we're going to narrow the scope a bit and talk about some specifics-- specifically regarding the seats.

Recall that the seats we used in this budget, to-be, Honda Challenge H4 race car, were found on Craigslist for an extremely cheap price due to their condition and age.  We paid ~$150 picked up ~30 minutes from home.

While the condition of the seats won't win any car shows, we don't care because we're racing the car.  However because the seats are old, their FIA certification has expired.

When doing HPDE or track days with the National Auto Sport Association (NASA) or other clubs, this may be okay as long as the car passes other safety rules.  However, wheel-to-wheel racing is a different story.  If the FIA certification is expired, the seat must be reinforced to ensure the seat back doesn't snap on impact.  To solve this problem, enter the back brace.

A seat back brace is intended to prevent excess movement of the seat forward or backward in a crash.  This ensures that the driver stays in the same spot, the harnesses do their job, and the driver is unharmed due to whiplash or other injury caused by sudden, harsh movement.  To read more about seat back braces and why they're useful, see this article by IO Port Racing.

Since our Integra was being converted from an HPDE car with a roll bar to a race car, one thing (among many) we needed to add was this seat back brace.  

The IO Port back brace is what we used, not because we're sponsored by them (I wish), but just because it's what we happened to order from them.  The kit comes with everything you'll need.  The picture below shows the contents of the kit and what purpose the components serve:

To begin installing our new brace, we first stripped the pristine fabric off of our God-knows-how-old years-old seats.

Lifting back the foam, it was easy to see where we could drill into for our new brace.

Next we began bolting things together.  In the labeled picture of the seat back brace above, you'll notice that the tube that transfers load from the seat to the cage in the event of a crash is secured to the cage with a two-piece, machined block of metal.  The top half of this block bolts to the cage and the bottom half bolts to the tube that transfers load.

We loosely bolted this onto the cage first.

Next, we grabbed our load transfer tube shown below:

And we inserted it into the bottom part of the machined block which we had loosely attached to the cage.  After doing this, we tried our best to center the bracket on the middle of the seat.

You'll notice that seat-back bracket was flat but the seat was curved.

To remedy this we needed to intervene, bending the soft aluminum with a vise and a hammer.  While in the vise, we also drilled the holes for the seat-to-bracket mounting hardware.  

Note that in the NASA Club Codes and Regulations (CCR), the mounting hardware facing the back of the car's driver must be flush with the seat, not protruding.  IO Port includes allen bolts which preclude any potential conflict with this rule and also provide for additional safety.

With the bracket bent to the profile of the seat, we centered the bracket with a whiteout marker and marked where the seat needed to be drilled.

Then, we secured the bracket to the seat using the provided hardware from IO Port.  On the side of the seat facing the racer's back, we used allen bolts with rounded heads as previously mentioned.  On the side opposite the racer's back, IO Port provided us locking nuts to use.

With the seat back brace secured to the seat and all other components loose, we finally began securing all other components which would bring us near completion.

The diagram below shows the order of final installation.  First, tighten the back brace-to-load transfer tube bolts.  Second, tighten the allen bolts securing the main block to the cage.  Third, drill a hole in the load transfer tube and insert your cotter pin:

With the back brace fully installed, we finally put the fabric back on our seat and concluded our install.  The fabric is easy to install back onto the old Corbeaus.  It has an elastic band that allows the fabric to stretch around the contours of the seat and tighten once past the edges.

Detailed photos of the installation are shown below:

On May 3rd, my friend Alex is going to New Jersey Motorsports Park with NASA Northeast to participate in Competition School for his provisional license and hopefully begin racing with the Honda Challenge H4 crew.

If you wish to attend one of our events, reach out to me in the comments section and I can get back to you ASAP!

Thanks for reading! --Track Rat

#TrashTeg, The Chronicles; Part 2-- Safety Gear

#TrashTeg, The Chronicles; Part 2-- Safety Gear

When EJ2 Track Rat last left off regarding the story of #TrashTeg, we touched on how we got this free car from Delaware to Philadelphia and we touched on how we made it run with a distributor cap, spark plug wires, spark plugs, and some water in the radiator.

In this next part, we'll talk about how we stripped the car down and installed some safety gear.

Figure 1: Alex at New Jersey Motorsports Park Shaking Down the Teg After we Built it

Since my Civic was being converted into a race car, I no longer needed the roll bar that I installed for high performance driving education (HPDE) and street driving.  I was installing a cage, and the car was no longer going to be street-driven as this is required in wheel-to-wheel racing.  However Alex was building a track car and it's never a bad thing to have additional safety.

Figure 2: The Roll Bar Previously in my Civic

The National Auto Sport Association's Northeast Region typically informs new drivers that the most important mods one can make to their car are in the form of safety upgrades.  A useful acronym to keep in mind when doing safety upgrades was originally coined by our HPDE 1 Instructor, Enrique, and goes as follows:

S-H-H 

AKA 

"SHH! STOP BUYING CAR PARTS AND GET ON TRACK!"

Figure 3: Rally Armor Mud Flaps Look Great but Don't Make You Safer

AKA (for real this time)

SEAT.  HARNESS.  HANS.

Figure 4: A Driver Strapped Into a Seat with a Harness, a Hans, and (in This Case) a Roll Cage

Hans is a popular model of "head and neck restraint" which is used in combination with your harnesses and your helmet to prevent whiplash from occurring in a high-velocity frontal accident.

Figure 5: How a Hans Device Works

A roll bar is used to prevent rollover damage to the driver's person, but it is also used as a mounting point for the harness.  Other options out there include harness bars, but these are not recommended as they have been known to buckle inward in the event of a forward collision.

Figure 6: Bent Harness Bar in 8th Gen Civic on Frontal Collision

The safety components mentioned above are meant to work as a system and using harnesses with your stock seat, or a regular Hans with your 3-point factory belt are not recommended.  I've done tech with NASA since 2016 and we always prefer a stock car to roll through over a car with improperly installed harnesses, roll bars without padding, and/or 3-point seat belts over fixed-back, bucket seats.

The simplest rule?

Before heading to a track day, always review the rule book and reach out to the officials for help when you are in doubt.  Ask for help and ye shall receive it!

Figure 7: A Car with 4-Point Harnesses Not Intended for Use with Stock Seats

Once we got the roll bar removed from my Civic, we had to begin prepping the interior of Alex's Integra, the #TrashTeg.  To start, we stripped all of the interior out of the car.  The major interior items that needed to be removed were:

The carpet

The seats

The center console

The seat belts

And the headliner

Figure 8: Interior of the Trash Teg

Next we removed the sound deadening from the car.  Sound deadening is found in most passenger cars in various areas around the chassis-- most notably the floor and transmission tunnel.  It is used to dampen vibrations and suppress road noise transmitted from the tires to the driver, but we don't care about noise and comfort in racing!  We care about going FAST.

Figure 9: Ricky Bobby

Sound deadening removal can be long and tedious or quick and easy depending on the fanciness of your car.  For example, my Civic's sound deadening came up on its own with some snow, a hammer, and a chisel (we did it outside).

However some cars have thicker, better quality sound deadening that requires more convincing to come off.  A common technique is dry ice.  For our project, we used about $20 of dry ice from a beer distributor.  However, a low buck method to remove sound deadening for people who have a winter season is to leave the race car out in freezing, cold weather overnight and knock the sound deadening loose in the morning.

Figure 10: Sound Deadening Removal with Dry Ice, a Mallet, and (Maybe) a Chisel

Given that this car was sitting in such rough conditions for such a long time (outside, not moving, when it did move it was driven and worked on by a sub-par mechanic), the sound deadening wasn't too hard to remove.  Alex and I got it all up within about 1.5 hours.

Figure 11: Our Tools we Used for Removal of Sound Deadening

Figure 12: The Trunk Area without Sound Deadening

While it was great for sound deadening removal, the neglect this car was put through was not good for much else.  When we pulled the carpet, we discovered that a significant amount of rust had eaten through one of the areas of the floor where the roll bar was supposed to mount to.

Figure 13: Passenger Side Rear Passenger Footwell with Rust

Alex and I took an old welder that had stopped working in his garage, we cut it up for scrap metal, pulled the wires for electronics spares, and salvaged whatever else we could before leaving it out on the Northwest Philly streets for scrappers.  With that same metal, we welded up a patch in the floor and removed as much of the rust we could.  Given that we had just started at welding, we didn't consider our work too shabby (though it could use improvement).

Figure 14: Shabby but Functional Welds on Alex's Floor Pan

After getting the roll bar installed, Alex then needed a pair of seats-- one for the driver and one for the instructor.  For HPDE I always recommend having a second seat.  You're not worried about the extra weight an instructor will gain you because you're not trying to win, but you'll also likely learn more from the right-seat advice.

Figure 15: Even Seasoned Racers Benefit from Good Instruction

Originally, Alex was contemplating spending major coin on these racing seats, but I told him that for HPDE we could use some cheap fixed back seats and be compliant with the rules.  Additionally, if he ever decided to go racing, when the cage got installed in the car, we could brace the back of the seats to the roll cage harness bar and still be legal!

Figure 16: Back Brace Used to Reinforce Back of Fiberglass Seat to Roll Cage Harness Bar

After some discussion, Alex and I set out to find some cheap seats on Craigslist, quickly coming up with an ad for some old Corbeaus that used to be in a Mustang.  The seller listed the seats for $200 but Alex ended up scooping them for a smoking deal of about $140.

Figure 17: These Seats were Intact and Ready to be Used

For brackets, we utilized the high quality, OEM seat rails, and $35 worth of steel bar stock with some spare hardware for the materials.  We cut the steel bar stock into four separate 18-inch-long pieces and mounted one at the fore-end and one at the aft-end of the OEM seat rails, securing them with spare hardware.  We then bolted the seats to the bars with the same said hardware.

Figure 18: Two Pieces of Bar Stock for Each Seat

Figure 19: Spare Hardware Used to Mount Seat to Bracket and Bracket to Sliders

Figure 20: Side View of Seat Mounted in Car

After we installed the seats, we had two last items to install-- the harnesses!  One of the harnesses, like many of the parts in Honda Challenge, was handed down to me from one friend, Anthony.

Since I didn't plan on having a passenger seat while racing initially, I gave Alex this spare harness so he could build his #TrashTeg.  Alex then bought a second harness of his own and some hardware to keep the driver and passenger safe.

Figure 21: G-Force Racing Harnesses and Associated Hardware for Install

With all of our gear laid out, we went to work getting alex seated in his ideal position for driving.

Figure 22: That Awkward Moment when You're Too Fast for Anything in Life

Once you have the seating position, the install for the harnesses is pretty much done by the book.  When I install harnesses on vehicles I'm working on, I typically use the Schroth Racing installation guide which can easily be found on their website.  A quick link to the PDF can be found here as well.

Figure 23: Drawing from the Schroth Racing Website's Guide Showing Proper Vs. Improper Harness Mounting Angles

As shown above, there is a given range of angles the installer must adhere to to make the system safe for the driver.  This is why it is imperative for the driver to be in their desired position when installing their harnesses.  It allows them to have control over where the lap belt mounting points need to go and if a cage is being welded in the car, the cage builder has a reference for a good harness bar height.

Lastly, in the picture below, note the metal collars that are on the harness bar.  These collars are on the roll bar to prevent the harnesses from sliding to the left or the right in the event of a frontal collision.  A simple and cheap, alternative solution to using these collars is roll bar padding foam or even generous amounts of duct or electrical tape.

Figure 24: Picture with Collars Circled for Reference

The final product was not beautiful, but it was safe and functional-- a good race car's desired state.  Check out some pictures of the final product below:

Figure 25 and 26: Passenger Seat with Old Harness from My Civic

Figure 27: Driver Seat with New Harness

Figure 28: Stock Steering Wheel with Air Bag Removed for Track-Only Safety (Remember, All Safety Components Act as a System)

Figure 29: View from Rear of Car Showing Newly Installed Safety Gear

In the next installation of #TrashTeg, you can expect to see regular maintenance activities that are good to attend to before hitting the track as well as some other minor changes.

Thank you for reading and keep coming back.

.