Doski

Hello, im looking for a place to mount a 6 point harness belt.

I will have no roll bar or harness bar. Instead i was thinking of mounting the belt on the hatrack? (Just under the rear window, there is a hollow metallbar.)

Is it possible? Because the height is right, but is it strong
enough? This on a c5 z06.

Tykrane30

Doski, my immediate reaction is to say no. I would go with what is known and put a harness bar in, They connect at the same point as the upper point for the 3point belt, and it is intended to take load.

I wouldn't personally trust a harness bar to save my life in the event of a major incident but it will certainly be better than attaching the belts to something that was never meant to take an impact load during an accident.

Harness bars aren't all that expensive, but to each their own. Really comes down to how much you value your safety.

work_truck

I'm confused as to what you're referring to as a hatrack

c4cruiser

I would definitely recommend installing a harness bar for your C5. The shoulder belts need to be even with the top of your shoulders and they also need to go thru holes in the seat back. Base C5 seats would work with a harness bar and straps, but not Z06 seats as they don't have any openings to pass shoulder belts thru the seat back.. Ideally, a race seat is a much better deal in that it will have holes for shoulder belts, lap belts and a sub belt like you see with 5-point harnesses. And you can still use the OEM belts to satisfy state laws (here in WA, harness belts are not legal for street driving).

Depending on the sanctioning body that is running an event you want to attend, they may not approve any other design outside of OEM seat belts.

Supercharged111

If harness bars had a bar in the middle to hold the load of harnesses pulling forward in a crash I'd be a much bigger fan.

fatbillybob

No problem build it! Or better yet make the harness bar a harness truss. Then you can anchor to B piller shoulder harness points and the seat belt sill plate anchors and even to the tunnel if you don't mind a couple of holes. Then you can anchor your 6 pt harness to the truss properly.

Doski

I am getting race seats, so thats no problem. But i have read problems with harness bars not to being safe in a crash. They are only supposed to be good for autocross. The B pilar or halo on our cars is supposed to hold up in a crash.
So i dont feel the need for a rollbar just for the harness belt. The car is mainly a street car but will see some track days.

Just trying to see if there is a easyier way to use harness belt and keeping the car stock. I also want to swap out the steering wheel, making the stock belt not so safe.

I dont know how to describe it better? Just below the rear window in the trunk, there is a metall bar. The regular c5 does not have this.

Bill Dearborn

That bar doesn't have the support required to hold up to the forces shoulder belts could put on it during an incident. Forces could exceed 3000 lbs. Install a BK Harness Bar and be done with the problem.

Bill

Doski

But is the harness bar really safe on race tracks with higher speeds?

work_truck

the only thing thats really going to be safe is an entire safety system (seat/cage/harnesses/helmet/hans)

harness bars are just a bandaid fix IMO

Bill Dearborn

A lot safer than mounting to a bracket that isn't designed to support a load anywhere near as high as the type of load you could put on it in a an incident. There are pictures on the internet of failed harness bars but I have never seen a picture of a failed harness bar in a Corvette. Even the infamous Arizona Speed and Marine piece of crap that used to be sold for the C4 Corvettes that could be bent just using your hands. It wasn't even safe in an autocross.

With a harness bar or roll bar in the car with race harnesses mounted each occupant will put at least 3000 lbs of shock load on the bar in a heavy frontal impact. The key items are how well the bar is mounted to the B Pillar and whether the bolts/welds will shear under that load and how the bar is restrained from pivoting around the axis of the line that goes across the car between the two stock shoulder belt mounts.


Over the years there have been a fair share of Corvettes with BK and Shark Bars installed that have had frontal impacts with tire walls or Armco without the bars bending/breaking. Last year a buddy of mine who had a BK bar installed in his C7 Z06 planted the nose of the car into a wall coming off a turn at about 50 mph at Road Atlanta. The bar didn't bend under the impact and he is still using it after the car was repaired.

Rollovers in HPDEs are rare, but they do happen. The biggest danger in a rollover isn't the roof intruding into the passenger compartment but the heads of the occupants being thrown out of the windows as the car turns over and thus impacting the ground. There is at least one video showing that happening as the driver's head goes out of the window and hits the pavement as the car rolls onto its roof and then back onto its wheels. When it was all over there was plenty of clearance left between the roof and the occupants but the driver's head was a different story.

Bill

Doski

Thanks for the input...i will look for a harness bar then..

smitty2919

I just installed a VetteWorks Sharkbar. It's a clean install. Another popular option is the Brey Krause harness bar.