seat belts, or harness?

mo-james

New member
I am building a jeep and have ordered a full set of PRP Seats, It has a full custom roll cage, and I cant decide what type of safety restraints I want to install for protection. What do you guys think, should I use harness's and if so what type of harness should I use, (the harness needs to bolt to the roll cage) and where can I find them reasonable?
thanks
p.s. I will post pics soon
tommorrow we install new cam, intake, and carb inside the chevy powerplant!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

If your doing low speed stuff like rock crawling I would get some good lap belts. Reason being is that they are easy to get out of in the case of a rollover or fire, and if your jeep will be used as a daily driver those harnesses may get annoying. Dont get me wrong, i love the look and feel of a good harness, but I just dont think they are practical for a daily driven vehicle, especially if you take any women round town with you. :wink:
 
State Laws

if its a rock crawler, i'd personally do the harness.. will keep you inside and safer... if its for the highway, i'd put in regulat belts.
 
I've seen lots of people that run both. You can tuck the harnesses out of the way when you don't need them. A harness is hard to live with on the street, you can't lean forward! As a matter of fact, if you are correctly wearing a 5-point harness, you can't move at all.

I tend to see things the opposite of graewulf on this subject. A harness system is more appropriate for things that involve speed. If you play on really big hills where MULTIPLE rollovers are possible then you need the harness, but rolling off a 4 foot rock ledge at 5mph doesn't really call for a safety-dated NHRA-certified harness system.

If you are going to install a harness, you need to get yourself an NHRA rulebook or look up the rules concerning the correct placement of attachment points. If you install it wrong, the harness itself will hurt you in a crash. Placing the mounts for the shoulder harness at the wrong height or angle can cause severe spine compression followed by permanent paralysis in a frontal impact.
Reasonable prices on harnesses can be found at the dragstrip. In order to remain legal, racers have to replace or recertify when the date tag runs out. To them that harness is junk, to a fourwheeler it's as good as new as long as the webbing isn't torn or chaffed. New ones aren't that expensive though, about $130-$140 for two Simpson five-points from Summit, I think. Just make sure they are SFI approved.
 
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