Mark Stanton Posted December 23, 2002 Share Posted December 23, 2002 Graham (apologies for off topic) Just noticed the holes cut into the back of your seat Why two of them You have a single eye fixing for a 3 point harness - for which I would assume you cut one central hole (like wot my mechanic did for me). Two holes are needed usually for four point harnesses A single hole for 3 point fixing allows the harness straps to pass through and over your shoulder at full tension and is checked by MSA scrutineers at events Have you checked this with your shoulder straps See if you can get some rubber edge trimming for the hole saves any chaffing of straps Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham.J Posted December 23, 2002 Share Posted December 23, 2002 I've actually just fitted 4 points, well 3 straps of my 4 points as as you quite rightly pointed out I only have one eye. I've also bought a quick release boss so when that gets welded on I will get a new harness eye welded on. I'm also looking for some rubber to cover the edges, I was thinking of heat shrink actually, a couple of layers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickpargeter Posted December 23, 2002 Share Posted December 23, 2002 Sorry lads, call me a sad bas...d but that picture has put me off big time. I am an insurance broker and deal with nasty accidents all the time, only this week a double fatal head on. One of the reasons I liked the Westfield was that, although I know it is a compromise, I had thought it to be reasonably safe...that picture worries me! How can any car manufaturer build a car with a roll bar which doesn't work if you roll!? How about the rest of the car? We all think we are good drivers but you buy this sort of car for one reason, speed, and I can assure you that we all sometimes get it wrong and I want to know I have the best chance possible of walking away. My chipped 260bhp 4WD Audi S3 is a safe car but you can get that sideways in the wet without too much trouble but at least it will look after me to a certain extent if I do come a cropper. After wanting one for years it looks as though I'll have to go down the Elise route and the added safety they bring. I have 3 kids who need a Father and have grudgingly deleted my wanted add. This post will no doubt provoke many replies but believe me I am not sad...I am just worried, that picture is BAD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham.J Posted December 23, 2002 Share Posted December 23, 2002 I see where your coming from on this, but basically all I can say is why not pay a bit extra and instead of a standard bar, get the factory to give you/fit an RAC bar which is up to the job if you do roll. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stu999 Posted December 23, 2002 Share Posted December 23, 2002 No hard feelings mate, Westfields arent for everyone. I have a mate who has recently finished his car and got it on the road, and he doesnt like it. Simple as that. But please, before you make final judgement, go and try one. For me at least, it's the feeling of NOT being cosseted by airbags,side protection,crumple zones, ABS, etc that makes the occiasion special. And as you probably know more than most, the best accident prevention would be the standard fitment of a razor sharp spike that appeared from the steering wheel when the engine was started. If this was norm, I reckon dickheads that follow too close would be a thing of the past.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimNoble Posted December 23, 2002 Share Posted December 23, 2002 Sorry lads, call me a sad bas...d but that picture has put me off big time. I am an insurance broker and deal with nasty accidents all the time, only this week a double fatal head on. One of the reasons I liked the Westfield was that, although I know it is a compromise, I had thought it to be reasonably safe...that picture worries me! How can any car manufaturer build a car with a roll bar which doesn't work if you roll!? How about the rest of the car? There's no shortage of examples of people buying a particular type of car, and being shocked to find that it doesn't perform to quite the extent they had assumed. So called "Soft Roaders" are a good example. People buy them and take them off-road, not realising that what they have actually bought is something that *looks* like an off-roader, but isn't really designed to go off road. Sooner or later someone snags a fuel or brake line, or gets stuck in a ditch... A Westfield without the RAC bar is just another example of this phenomenon. It's not designed to be driven at 10/10ths on a public road. (If you want to be pushing the envelope, you're going to need at least the RAC roll bar, or perhaps even a full cage, and a track!). Think of it as a "Soft Race car". If you want to drive a road car in the manner for which it was intended, you have little to worry about. You can, of course, buy the RAC roll bar anyway, and perhaps sleep a little better at night (and/or take it on the track aswell)... Jim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick M Posted December 23, 2002 Share Posted December 23, 2002 but you buy this sort of car for one reason, speed WRONG !!! You buy them because they handle like a go-kart and offer 5 billion times the driver involvement that your S3 offers !! And you can have fun even when you're not going that quickly. And unfortunately you've hit on my personal bug-bear with modern cars !! Quite frankly sideways in an S3 (presumably on the public roads ?) would have me s***ting bricks because I don't trust a car, however apparently capable it may be, that hasn't been designed with handling foremost in the mind of the engineers. Yes it may be possible to goon it on a wet roundabout but the designers probably tried their hardest to make this something that wouldn't happen very often, in case it caught out Mr and Mrs Numpty. As a result, you're taking the car outside of where it is engineered to be and I couldn't, therefore, trust it to be 100% predictable. To be perfectly blunt, a car is only as safe as its driver. Anything which instills a sense of protection or "well if I *do* have a crash I can expect to walk away" is, IMO, a bad thing. It does nothing to encourage people to drive within their limits or to make them aware of the actions of another road user. "Accidents", in many cases, aren't accidents - they are the direct result of someone either pushing their luck, losing concentration (assuming they were concentrating in the first place ! or failing to take in their surroundings, i.e. poor observation, lack of appreciation of road conditions, that sort of thing. Jump into a Westfield and *every* journey becomes one where the driver is involved. And it's oh so satisfying as a result Now, don't take this as a personal slight on your driving ability - it's not meant to be that in any way shape or form. But what it is trying to get across is that driving a Westfield (or any small sports car in that vein) is quite an eye-opener. Of course they're not as safe in an accident as a Volvo, but that doesn't mean they are inherently dangerous. As for an Elise, well if you consider them to be that much safer than a Westfield then I'd suggest you have a much closer look at them. I'm not saying they're dangerous but on-the-limit handling is less forgiving than a Westfield and, based on my brief experiences of them, I found them to be less involving from the driver's perspective. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickpargeter Posted December 23, 2002 Share Posted December 23, 2002 Its getting interesting this one! Just how much better is the RAC bar? Has anyone seen any pictures of one to compare to the standard bar after an accident. I have no arguement with you guys as to how good these cars are to drive, I have been in a few and rate them but that picture got me really worried IF anything happened. Hopefully the chances are it wouldn't and I know we can't cover ourselves in cotton wool but that bar really looked bad. I had previously had all the discussions with my wife re safety and was not concerned - but that picture........wow. Am I over reacting? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham.J Posted December 24, 2002 Share Posted December 24, 2002 There was a link at the start of this thread of a FIA bar which had been rolled 3 timeshere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bob Green Posted December 24, 2002 Share Posted December 24, 2002 Hi Nick Pargeter I think you need to re-appraise NickM's answer as it makes devastatingly good reading. I have been in the motor industry for the thick end of 35 years and consider I understand certain limits cars are capable of. Forgetting racing a car on a track (of which the unfortunate image of a broken roll bar was highlighted) and I make no light of this. I hope the driver of that particular Westfield escaped without as much as a dent in their ego, never mind any bodily damage. In your industry, you must know that cars cannot kill. How can it kill when it is sitting on the drive doing nothing? On the road, death is caused sometimes by a driver reading a situation wrong. I guess what made me reply to this thread is that you seem to feel you are fairly bomb proof should you be involved in an accident in your Audi A3. Last Thursday, my company was requested to attend an RTA which had resulted in two fatalities in an Audi A3. The brief discussion with the Police identified the driver "just lost it". If you drive a car on a track at 11/10ths, sometimes it goes pear shaped but there is a medical team on site to react to the situation. When some drivers drive a road car at 7/10ths, they wait for the next car that may drive along that road. I do not wish to appear as the Grim Reaper but any car is as safe as you make/build it but more importantly, how good the driver is (and that is not a slur on the owner of the Westfield in the picture). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stu999 Posted December 24, 2002 Share Posted December 24, 2002 Thats better..... Yes, IMO you are over reacting. As the name suggests, the RAC roll bar is approved for competition purposes (whereas your 'standard' Audi wouldnt be), so one can assume a decent level of protection should the worst happen. Ok, so it doesnt cover all eventualitys, but, neither does the Audi. Westfield have actually submitted cars for frontal impact crash testing, which AFAIK passed with flying colours. They are much, much safer than any motorbike. At the end of the day, its really warming to see someone think of their family when making a decision like this, and I mean that sencerely. But, when your number is up, it is up, whether you are drivng the Audi or the Westy.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham.J Posted December 24, 2002 Share Posted December 24, 2002 If you look at that link I just posted, I for one am amazed at the difference, as I said that se7en had been rolled 3 times and everthing is fine, apart from the front end and his ego. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick M Posted December 24, 2002 Share Posted December 24, 2002 Gosh, thanks Bob To be honest my reply just expresses my sentiment that too many people rely on the car to get / keep them out of trouble, and I find this a dangerous direction to be heading in. goodness me, car manufacturers now have to design their car to protect an occupant who isn't wearing a seatbelt, despite common sense and all the reports highlighting the benefits of doing so.... I don't consider myself to be anything more than an average driver - I can't, hand on heart, say I don't end up getting bored and hence losing concentration while driving a modern snoozemobile - but I do at least try not to slip into a false sense of security. Yes, I look at how a car performs in crash tests when deciding on a car for my family, but I don't assume that good test results in some way allow me to drive less carefully than I might otherwise. Anyway, rant / sermon over..... The flattened roll bar (the dark blue Westy on page 1) was as a result of a road accident and I think the driver suffered from a) a touch of over-exuberance (by his own admission) and b) bad luck because of the way the car rolled over and dug in. As Hurdsey said, he made an almost full recovery (I think he has some scarring and slightly impaired use of one of his arms) but he was *extremely* lucky not to come off worse. The pictures of the c******m rollbar, by contrast, suggest a well made structure which, if you hadn't been told, you wouldn't immediately think had been in an accident. This is how I would expect the Westfield RAC roll bar to stand up to an accident although, as far as I'm aware, nobody has put one to the test. At the end of the day only you can decide if you're prepared to accept the risks associated with doing something, be that driving a Westfield or crossing the road. But to me it would seem a shame to miss out on things "just in case" they might, under certain circumstances, be a bit dangerous. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stu999 Posted December 24, 2002 Share Posted December 24, 2002 [hijack thread] Nick, is the car over yet? Have you A*** whipped any Yank lard-mobiles? [/hijackthread] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick M Posted December 24, 2002 Share Posted December 24, 2002 Don't know - didn't get a chance to speak to the shipping agent today but it must be any day now if it isn't already sitting on the dock in Longbeach. Should have it very early Jan by the time it's cleared customs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.