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(54 votes) Published: Oct 23, 2007 3:48 p.m. In 1 Favorites Lists Viewed 190 times
Ok first of all, i dont care if your car is a 9 second machine or if it is a 19 second eggbeater, you NEED this equipment. Plenty of people drag race cars thinking that they are built well enough to handle racing and they usually find out the hard way (by falling out the bottom of their car, or by being pushed through the roof). This is NO JOKE, positive feedback is greatly appreciated but this is a VERY serious subject to me and i refuse to create any more eggs about cars, racing, or suping them up until i can get this safety information out there.
What you need:
*Electrical Kill Switch
*FULL ROLL CAGE (not half cage)
*Engine Oil Catch can
*Racing harness
New tires
New Brakes/lines
Sturdy wheels
Strong axles and motor mounts
*Explained in more depth.
Now these things that ive listed obviously arent the only things you will need. But they are a MUST. It doesnt matter if your car is doing 150 mph down the track or 50 mph, you need to do as much as possible to prevent your car from smashing into the wall due to equipment malfunction. It is very easy to kill yourself in a car while doing 50 mph, in fact i know someone who died in a car crash from doing 5 mph (with a safety belt and helmet with no equipment malfunction ON PERFECTLY LEVEL GROUND). A small shift in weight, snap of an axle, lockup of a brake cylinder or blowout of a tire can veer you directly into a concrete wall which can slide your car sideways. What you need to remember is that the dragstrip is EXTREMELY STICKY. Cars do not slide across the strip sideways like they do on pavement. The pavement is so sticky and grippy that the car will immediately get flipped over. IF you survive that, then chances are, your opponent will slam his car into yours at 50 mph.
ELECTRICAL KILL SWITCH This may just shut off your battery but in turn, it does alot more than that. People may think that it just prevents an electrical fire, well it also shuts off your fuel pump and everything else electrical in the car. When you flip your car and the key is still in the ON position, if you break a fuel line, fuel is going to spray EVERYWHERE. And chances are it will light on fire and cook you alive inside of your car. With a kill switch on the rear of your vehicle, it is rare that the backside of the vehicle will be obliterated so a track official can run over and shut everything down. It is a good investment, another electrical kill switch should also be placed in the cabin of the car. Kill switches can be upwards of $20 but it is much like a bulletproof vest. (worth every penny)
This electrical kill switch can be purchased for $5 and is a line-in/out for the positive terminal of the battery. It should be placed on the rear side of the car near the license plate.
FULL ROLL CAGE Ok so alot of people think that a Half-Cage is going to protect them. Sure it will protect them if a tree falls on the roof of their car but not much else. A half cage basically just surrounds the driver but the driver isnt a part of it.
A rusted floor pan like this can be fatal in an accident. Floor pans are usually made from 16 gauge or 14 gauge (1/16th or 1/14th inch) sheet metal. Your seat and seatbelt is bolted onto this. If you were to flip your car or smash it into anything, your seat would bottom out right through the floor. And when you are attached to your seat by a seatbelt, your chance of surviving an accident like that are VERY VERY VERY SLIM.
A HALF-CAGE is very common for people who want to pass SCCA, NHRA or IHRA racing regulations but dont want to dish out alot of money. A half cage is basically just an overhead U-shaped bar that is welded into the floor of the car, it has a few triangulated pieces but really just acts as chassis support. It doesnt protect the driver a whole lot and the seat does not bolt onto it in any way shape or form, it is like wearing a bulletproof vest without a helmet. YOU ARE EXPOSED.
This is a half-cage, it prevents the roof from being crushed in, but doesnt protect the driver from being ejected from the vehicle or having the rest of the car collapse into him.
The Half-cage looks nice as a show car thing because it shows some sort of protection and chassis rigidity without affecting the luxury for the passenger and driver but recycles the original soft sheet metal that the manufacturer used for the floor. It doesnt matter if you have a normal chassis or a unibody, you need a full cage if you want to race. Sure there are ambulances and EMT personnel at the racetrack but theres not much they can do to save you if they cant find your limbs and your burnt to a crisp. (NOT A JOKE)
FULL ROLL CAGE Ok this cage should be triangulated as much as possible because trianges are stronger than squares and cannot be collapsed easily. It should wrap around the driver as much as possible and should require removal of the drivers seat for installation. The drivers seat should bolt directly onto the cage itself and the racing harness should bolt to the cage as well. The seat should be incorporated as one with the cage, the cage should wrap around the seat and protect all the way down to the legs and up above the head, it should stretch over to the passengers side of the car to protect the driver’s right arm, it should run across the dashboard, up back to the roof and protect everything inside of a little cockpit. The roof shouldnt smash down into the steering wheel or onto the drivers head, and if the car was smashed from below, the driver should not go flying through the roof. The best cages are welded to the chassis/unibody of the car and should have good strong welds, mandrel bends and be made from chrome-moly or stainless steel. A racer can weld in his own roll cage that is manufactured in his own basement for $500 or less if the tools are already supplied. some welders and fabricators will build/install one into your car for less than $2500. It is a must for racing. It should triangulate from the waist down to the toes and cut across to protect the feet. X-patterns are great because they are basically 4 trianges conjoined protecting from any kind of blow.
This is a good roll cage, it wraps around the driver and the seatbelt and seat bolt directly onto it.
This roll cage is made to look all fancy because it has custom bends made to it but it is really only useful in certain aspects. It gives protection in some areas but none in others. A roll cage should be designed so that it is Difficult to hop into the car and difficult to install the cage. I still consider this a half-cage despite the fact that it has side to side and overhead protection but no forwards/backwards protection or bottomside protection. The seat is not bolted directly to the rollcage.
RACING HARNESSES Allright racing harnesses are racing harnesses and i doubt the government would allow unsafe harnesses to be put out on the market. Inproper installation and adjustment of a good racing harness can make it completely useless. Now if you have a rollcage and your seat is bolted onto it, bolting the harness to either your seat or your rollcage works, but do not bolt it to any other part of the chassis. If the harness extended all the way into the back of the car and bolted somewhere else, it would be completely useless if the back half of the car got collapsed and the belt snapped. There are 4 point, 3 point and 5 point harnesses or even more, but they dont do anything if they arent installed correctly. I prefer to have my harness bolt to a sturdy part of the bottom seat frame and then have my seat frame and back not only bolted to the rollcage of my car, but also be attached by straps.
Bolting directly to your rollcage and seatframe is the best way to mount a racing harness.
Now i dont care how sturdy you think the chassis of your car is, or how well built your car is, if you plan to race competetively or even just do it as a weekend hobby, you cant put a price on stuff like this. I have seen half cages fold in half like paper, i have seen people get sandwiched between their half cage and their dashboard and ive seen a seat get pushed through the roof of a car like a hole puncher. AND YES A DRIVER WAS IN THAT SEAT. A crash is a crash whether it be 40 mph or 140. A few weeks ago, i saw a 14 year old girl get killed in a junior dragster doing 35 mph due to equipment malfunction. Her disk brake piston seized up because she didnt rebuild and constantly check safety components during every season or race.
Understand that if you want to take your grandma’s mercury mystique (mistake) up to the racetrack and try to push 45 down the track, you cant assume that its impossible to get hurt/killed. Torque steer is imminent in any vehicle over 4.5 hp and the traction is intense.
Oct 23, 2007 5:02 pm - I worked at a machineshop building race motors for awhile, ive restored cars for celebrities, but now, im an automotive technician so i tune, supe up and work on european cars now for a living. I do alot with turbocharging, supercharging and getting alot of power from small displacement motors (under 2.4 litres).
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