SCCAForums.com

47CP:

Andy,

I don't have a public position on this rule.  I have dipped my toes in this thread on a few of the ridiculous examples with my own ridiculous examples. 

Let's not confuse that with me wanting to throw out the rule or wanting people to die.

DaveW

Understood.

But you *are* on the SEB, and despite all the caveats you put out there, people will still take your words as some indication of how you feel and will act officially.  It is only natural, and is one of the most frustrating parts of the job.  Isn't politics wonderful?

--Andy "lovin' the unofficial life" 

Andy Hollis:

If this rule gets weakened and somebody dies, how are you rulesmakers going to feel?  And how about the folks who lobbied them for the change?  All for a couple of pounds.  I know I will have done my best to try and prevent such a thing from happening (again).

Come on Andy, this is a cheap shot.  Because I dissagree with your methods doesn't mean I want unsafe seats.  In fact, it is my opinion that this rule does little to ensure safe seats, it only ensures heavy seats.  "Removing the incentive" to cut corners on seat mounts does nothing to address the amature, backyard, substandard mounts that people are likely to come up with.  The reason they made poor quality mounts is they were ignorant of the issues and risks not that they are trying to save 3 lbs. 

To turn your question around: How are the authors and proponents of this rule going to feel is someone dies from a poorly designed/executed seat/mount that meets the letter and intent of this rule?   Can the opponents say "We told you so"?

Seat mount guidelines and standards are a much more effective method of ensuring safe seats.  And like George, and many other objectors, I find the cost control precedent it establishes to be just as objectionable.
  

Howdy,

Steve Hoelscher:

Andy Hollis:

If this rule gets weakened and somebody dies, how are you rulesmakers going to feel?  And how about the folks who lobbied them for the change?  All for a couple of pounds.  I know I will have done my best to try and prevent such a thing from happening (again).

Come on Andy, this is a cheap shot.  Because I dissagree with your methods doesn't mean I want unsafe seats.

Its going to come as a hell of a surprise to everyone in this thread (me too... :-) but I completely agree with Steve on this.  I don't think anyone involved with this thread (except maybe the MG bucket seat guy. :-) wants to see unsafe seats/mounts in autox. 

In fact, it is my opinion that this rule does little to ensure safe seats, it only ensures heavy seats.  "Removing the incentive" to cut corners on seat mounts does nothing to address the amature, backyard, substandard mounts that people are likely to come up with.  The reason they made poor quality mounts is they were ignorant of the issues and risks not that they are trying to save 3 lbs. 

Steve, that's just not true.  Part of the reason some people made poor quality (from a safetly / stabilty perspective) seat mounts was because they were trying to keep the weight down.  Remove the incentive to do that, and they no longer have that driving force.  There may well have been others that made poor seat mounts out of ignorance, but I'd tend to say that anyone who was fabricating their own seat mounts was probably tending to fall on the "save weight" side of the fence.

 

To turn your question around: How are the authors and proponents of this rule going to feel is someone dies from a poorly designed/executed seat/mount that meets the letter and intent of this rule?   Can the opponents say "We told you so"?

Could we just stop this nonsense?  You could say the same sorta thing about many of the rules we have.

 

Seat mount guidelines and standards are a much more effective method of ensuring safe seats.  And like George, and many other objectors, I find the cost control precedent it establishes to be just as objectionable.

Seat mount guidelines, without a way to enforce them, are useless.  "one size fits all" seat mount guidelines are even more useless, as you're finding (spurious, IMHO) issues with the _extremely_ basic ones that are already there.

But just for the sake of argument, why don't you write up your seat mount requirements and post them?

We're not going to agree on the cost control stuff.  :-)  I will say that if costs can't be controlled, I don't see why I can't put a cam in my car, remove the rear seat, run spherical bearings, change the rear gear, or any of a number of other things I'd like to do that would benefit all cars similar amounts.  :-)

Mark

marka:

Steve, that's just not true.  Part of the reason some people made poor quality (from a safetly / stabilty perspective) seat mounts was because they were trying to keep the weight down.  Remove the incentive to do that, and they no longer have that driving force.  There may well have been others that made poor seat mounts out of ignorance, but I'd tend to say that anyone who was fabricating their own seat mounts was probably tending to fall on the "save weight" side of the fence.

Mark, I appreciate your support above but on this point I think we will have to dissagree.  I think the "average" guy making a seat mount for his SP car is going to simply make a mount out of whatever he has laying around and if it looks good and isn't a a boat anchor, he's going to be happy with it.  Chances are he is going to use the 20 lbs seat rule to save money by buying a cheaper/heavier seat.  If that's the case, the weight of the mount comes back into play.  His engineering may be faulty even if the materials are adequate.

marka:

Could we just stop this nonsense?  You could say the same sorta thing about many of the rules we have.

That was basically my point.  I was using that statement to turn the tables on Andy's comment.  Should I have used a smilely there?

marka:

 

Seat mount guidelines, without a way to enforce them, are useless.  "one size fits all" seat mount guidelines are even more useless, as you're finding (spurious, IMHO) issues with the _extremely_ basic ones that are already there.

But just for the sake of argument, why don't you write up your seat mount requirements and post them?

I already have written and posted a proposed wording.  I will try to flesh it out and repost.

It is a fundamental principle of management that if you have a problem, you fix the problem, you don't try to manage the problem.  So if tech is the problem, fix tech.  This has been my position from the begining.  I am sure that seats are not our only safety issue at present so fixing tech would go alot further in being pro-active on safety than "removing the incentive" to be unsafe. Shifting the responsibility of safety from tech and the SSS program to the competitors in protest is without question NOT the best way to fix a safety issue.  I am glad to see some initiative underway regarding tech.  I think its long overdue.

Steve Hoelscher:

Andy Hollis:

If this rule gets weakened and somebody dies, how are you rulesmakers going to feel?  And how about the folks who lobbied them for the change?  All for a couple of pounds.  I know I will have done my best to try and prevent such a thing from happening (again).

Come on Andy, this is a cheap shot.  Because I dissagree with your methods doesn't mean I want unsafe seats.  In fact, it is my opinion that this rule does little to ensure safe seats, it only ensures heavy seats.

Read what I said a little closer, Steve.  I said "weaken".  I did not say "change". 

--Andy 

Andy Hollis:

If this rule gets weakened and somebody dies, how are you rulesmakers going to feel?  And how about the folks who lobbied them for the change?  All for a couple of pounds.  I know I will have done my best to try and prevent such a thing from happening (again).

Before we start to sling guilt, let's set the bar and define where the strength in the rule really lies.

1) The high-road on this issue is to mandate safety. Whether it's the SCCA or the SEB or whoever, someone decided we didn't want to risk the liability, so we didn't take the high-road. I think we can still acheive this by adopting an existing rule from the GCR or some other series, and/or using something like FIA standards and still avoid the liability issue.

2) The middle-road is probably to set guidelines like this rule has for mounting points and seatback heights that directly address weak/dangerous practices. Nobody has expressed any desire to abolish this portion/intent other than for technical reasons as to why certain cars can't meet the current verbage. Kudos to those who proposed this piece--not perfect, but a clear step in the right direction.

3) The lower-road is to make a rule that can be acheived six different ways, where only one of which has the desired result, and it is neither the cheapest nor easiest route to meeting the rule. I'd guess the % that acheive the desired result is low single digits. This is what the weight minimum does. Before we even discuss the penalty placed on safe light seats, this portion of the rule misses it's mark over 90% of the time.

Most, if not all of us have issue with #3. It at best acheives a very small portion of it's intent, while unnecessarily penalizing a portion of people who already meet it's intent. Why shouldn't we make it better? I'd think the moral high-ground would be to focus on just that.

Howdy,

rnoll98:

3) The lower-road is to make a rule that can be acheived six different ways, where only one of which has the desired result, and it is neither the cheapest nor easiest route to meeting the rule. I'd guess the % that acheive the desired result is low single digits. This is what the weight minimum does. Before we even discuss the penalty placed on safe light seats, this portion of the rule misses it's mark over 90% of the time.

Most, if not all of us have issue with #3. It at best acheives a very small portion of it's intent, while unnecessarily penalizing a portion of people who already meet it's intent. Why shouldn't we make it better? I'd think the moral high-ground would be to focus on just that.

Randy, you're making some pretty bold statements there about a rule that was put in place just last year _after a good period for member comment_.  By my count, there might be a half dozen folks involved in this thread that are against this new rule.  I hardly think thats "most if not all of us"...  Perhaps "most of us bitching about the new rule in this thread" (though "many" would be more appropriate I think).  Perhaps "most of us who have a problem with the rule have a problem with the weight requirement only".

But as you've stated it there above, I'll call BS on that one until you back it up with some survey results or whatever.

You're also making some _wild_ assumptions about whether or not the weight rule helps the seat mount fabricators... With my cheapo tube frame seat (I don't believe I could save any more money than I did and have a seat I didn't think was woefully inadequate in a crash), I was still under the weight limit with a steel mount.  That mount was certainly as minimal as I felt safe with (and I mean "safe if I put the car into a tirewall and my wife was in it", not "safe for autox"), but just as certainly when I needed to add weight and braced it a little more, the mount got stronger.

I personally know at least two other people in my region who put passenger seats in their ST & SP cars.  In each case, _weight_ was the driving factor and in each case they did it cheaply.  How?  They used crap Summit Racing seats with seat mounts that as I recall were so light/weak that at least one of them wouldn't let anyone ride in the car in them.  In each case, those seats/mounts were underweight and, had they been doing it today, they wouldn't have had the motivation to use a crap seat/mount.

Again, a Sparco Rev seat with steel Sparco side mounts is ~21 lbs.  I'm quite sure that there are lots of existing SP & SM cometitors whose seats are lighter than 20 lbs (prior to this rule).  I was one of them.  But I fail to see how the weight requirement does anything other than help someone who's prepping a car today for SP.

Mark

Howdy,

Also... 

rnoll98:

1) The high-road on this issue is to mandate safety. Whether it's the SCCA or the SEB or whoever, someone decided we didn't want to risk the liability, so we didn't take the high-road. I think we can still acheive this by adopting an existing rule from the GCR or some other series, and/or using something like FIA standards and still avoid the liability issue.

You presumably already know the problems with using the GCR seat mounting rules... First, either the seat needs to be FIA labelled ($$, usually) and mounted using FIA approved mounts, or you need a rollbar & a seat back brace.

There's a host of issues with that... 

The first is just a straight $ issue.  Requiring FIA seats/mounts is pretty expensive.

Second, unlike roadracing, we can't mandate a seat replacement in a grassroots sport.  Lots of people are going to look at you like you're an idiot if you allow them to run a stock seat with an (improperly mounted) five point harness, but won't let you run a Corbeau Forza with the same thing.  And they'd be right to look at you funny..

Third, you can't even swap stock seats around... That STX WRX guy with an STi seat?  Illegal.

Fourth, hardly anyone has a rollbar in their car to mount that seat back brace to.

Fifth, and perhaps most damning, I don't believe I've ever seen an FIA approved seat slider (I've certainly never seen a racecar with one anyway).  So even with your FIA approved seat it needs to be solidly mounted, without a slider.  The non-FIA approved seat is already secured to the rollbar (in the very small # of cars that will have one), so that's not sliding either.  Ever walk around an autox and check out seats?  I bet you could count on one hand the # of driver seats mounted in a fixed position.  Autox cars tend to be shared between drivers and/or pull double duty.  Seat sliders are the name of the game.

Six, and also pretty important, Roadracing has a tech program who knows that to look for with seats.  They get away with vauge wording on seat mounting (vs. the cage wording for instance) because they've got a culture and some training in place to get a guy in place to say "that meets the letter of the rules I guess, but I'm not going to let it run."  Solo doesn't have that.  Perhaps, eventually, it could but it doesn't exist now.

Steve's point about "fix the problem, don't manage it" is great if you can actually fix the problem and if its clear when you're "managing" it vs. "fixing" it.  But I think you'll find thats more of a soundbite quote than anything else.  Club Racing's rules on seats are "managing" the problem too... They're not requiring safety, just trying to elimate some ways non-safe stuff gets through.  The recent SP rule change is trying to do the same.

Mark

marka:

Howdy,

rnoll98:

3) The lower-road is to make a rule that can be acheived six different ways, where only one of which has the desired result, and it is neither the cheapest nor easiest route to meeting the rule. I'd guess the % that acheive the desired result is low single digits. This is what the weight minimum does. Before we even discuss the penalty placed on safe light seats, this portion of the rule misses it's mark over 90% of the time.

Most, if not all of us have issue with #3. It at best acheives a very small portion of it's intent, while unnecessarily penalizing a portion of people who already meet it's intent. Why shouldn't we make it better? I'd think the moral high-ground would be to focus on just that.

I personally know at least two other people in my region who put passenger seats in their ST & SP cars.  In each case, _weight_ was the driving factor and in each case they did it cheaply.  How?  They used crap Summit Racing seats with seat mounts that as I recall were so light/weak that at least one of them wouldn't let anyone ride in the car in them.  In each case, those seats/mounts were underweight and, had they been doing it today, they wouldn't have had the motivation to use a crap seat/mount.

Mark,

You're right, I wasn't assuming "most of us" as the community. I intended that to be those who were opposed, that Andy was referencing in the text I quoted. Sorry about that.

I'd argue cost was as much of a factor as weight. If you're running a $32 Summit seat, and can't splurge for the $19 aluminum mounts, you haven't combed the earth for the lightest option. You've found the cheapest seat that you consider reasonably light. What do those things weigh anyways? With upholstery (my bad, another $30), they have to weigh > 15#.

How has this rule motivated this guy to turn in his $62 seats and buy safer ones? How has it shown him how to use the weight penalty to make himself safer? What are the odds he builds an unsafe mount out of heavier materials because he doesn't have the knowledge or the budget to do anything but?

Your response to the FIA piece makes sense. Can you show me where you found the part on mounts? All I found was compliant seats and how they should be mounted (bottom, side, etc.), but nothing about approved mounts.

For anyone still following this circle of debate: This rule is being looked at for 2009.

As always, letters with constructive suggestions are welcomed at seb@scca.com.

Hmmmm.....after the preceding comments.

 Who knows how to do steel connection (seat mount) design?

 Anyone here?

 Do you know whether a certain weight steel structure/mount might be stronger than another aluminum one?  How?  Why?

 Well, as a civil engineer having done steel connection design in the past, but having examined very few, I have to say that most of the welded connection inspections (on buildings/structures) were done by specialized welding/structural consultants.  I did not do the inspections.  Heck, I designed them and did not know what to look for!  The welds looked pretty much the same to me from the outside!  You need a specialist!  Radiography, x-ray inspections....

 So, I ask, what would a typical solo tech inspector be expected to look for?  What could they (realistically) be expected to look for?

 How the heck would one be able to tell a safe design from an unsafe one (unless grossly negligent)?

 I'm a structural engineer and I wouldn't be able to tell!  How would you?  Hint:  Mass of steel does not signify a "safe" mount.  It might, in fact, be a sign of poor design and inadequate strength!

 Scarey?  Yes.

 You know what I think? 

 There has to be a simpler way.  Simple as that.

 Reijo

Well we could require people to supply a CAE model of the seat bracket with a full FEA report showing various loadings the seat may encounter. That would be easy.

I have experience designing stamped steel welded sub-frames and agree with your post.

The only thing a tech inspector could do is look for fundamental flaws in the design and visually cruddy welds. but before you can judge a fundamental flaw you first have to determine those would/could be for seat mounts.

marka:

Second, unlike roadracing, we can't mandate a seat replacement in a grassroots sport.  Lots of people are going to look at you like you're an idiot if you allow them to run a stock seat with an (improperly mounted) five point harness, but won't let you run a Corbeau Forza with the same thing.  And they'd be right to look at you funny..

The worst irony in this entire discussion is that solo still doesn't even require shoulder belts to be worn, yet somehow we're trying to make sure the seat is securely attached to the car. I wonder if we've missed something. 

Howdy,

rnoll98:

marka:

I personally know at least two other people in my region who put passenger seats in their ST & SP cars.  In each case, _weight_ was the driving factor and in each case they did it cheaply.  How?  They used crap Summit Racing seats with seat mounts that as I recall were so light/weak that at least one of them wouldn't let anyone ride in the car in them.  In each case, those seats/mounts were underweight and, had they been doing it today, they wouldn't have had the motivation to use a crap seat/mount.

[...] 

I'd argue cost was as much of a factor as weight. If you're running a $32 Summit seat, and can't splurge for the $19 aluminum mounts, you haven't combed the earth for the lightest option. You've found the cheapest seat that you consider reasonably light. What do those things weigh anyways? With upholstery (my bad, another $30), they have to weigh > 15#.

How has this rule motivated this guy to turn in his $62 seats and buy safer ones? How has it shown him how to use the weight penalty to make himself safer? What are the odds he builds an unsafe mount out of heavier materials because he doesn't have the knowledge or the budget to do anything but?

Well, I actually talked to them when they were doing this, so I'm not too sure how much you know about their motivations vs. me... :-)  Of course, I wasn't particularly caring too much about it at the time (beyond looking for a way to make fun of them for using crap seats... :-), so maybe I'm mis-remembering something.

The financial equation I think you're missing is that "real" lightweight seats are all >$1k (at least, that's my impression for CF seats).  Those get written off immediately as being too much money.

Then folks look at "reasonably" priced seats like the Corbeau FX-1 and Forza.  Each is considered "heavy" so that gets discarded, and they go with the lightweight plastic fantastic w/cover.

With the weight limit, they can get one of those reasonably priced seats without feeling like they're at a disadvantage, happy to have a 'real' seat in the car. 

 

Your response to the FIA piece makes sense. Can you show me where you found the part on mounts? All I found was compliant seats and how they should be mounted (bottom, side, etc.), but nothing about approved mounts.

I can't find anything real on mounts... All I recall is that I remembered the FIA rating sheet you posted early said something about how to keep the rating, the seat must be mounted in the recommended manner (or something like that).  Mostly I was speaking from the standpoint of someone that's never seen a slider on a real racecar's seat.

Mark

(also, I looked back toward the beginning of this thread... I think this may be a record for the longest running thread where we're all still saying the exact same things >6 months later.  :-)

marka:

Well, I actually talked to them when they were doing this, so I'm not too sure how much you know about their motivations vs. me... :-)  Of course, I wasn't particularly caring too much about it at the time (beyond looking for a way to make fun of them for using crap seats... :-), so maybe I'm mis-remembering something.

The financial equation I think you're missing is that "real" lightweight seats are all >$1k (at least, that's my impression for CF seats).  Those get written off immediately as being too much money.

 

I can't find anything real on mounts... All I recall is that I remembered the FIA rating sheet you posted early said something about how to keep the rating, the seat must be mounted in the recommended manner (or something like that).  Mostly I was speaking from the standpoint of someone that's never seen a slider on a real racecar's seat.

I think it's funny that nobody bats an eye over spending $2k on a set of wheels that are 2# lighter per wheel, but $1k to save 10# on a seat is written off immediately. OR, maybe the guys you mentioned above aren't the $2k wheel guys either, in which case we go back to the scary precedent that is being set that others have mentioned. This rule wasn't intended to control cost, and I'm not sure that's a valid argument to keep it.

The FIA doc I referenced only stated where on the seat the mounts need to attach to be compliant. I'm not sure it'd be that big a deal to go to an FIA rule, or some hybrid of it. People get turned away from autoxes all the time for stuff like this. A small crack in a windshield. A loose battery. If we're going to actually enforce safety, some folks will need to upgrade their stuff or (possibly a better case) revert back to stock. The lap belt piece mentioned above is also a great point.

I'm wondering if this really needed to be addressed. It's easy to say it did because saying it didn't is accepting guilt if someone dies, and probably emboldening the terrorists as well. But right now we sit with a rule that has no precedent anywhere else in racing, that is based on a questionable argument that it motivates the competitor in one direction.

marka:

 

(also, I looked back toward the beginning of this thread... I think this may be a record for the longest running thread where we're all still saying the exact same things >6 months later.  :-)

nah, the BSP EVO/STI thread was way longer.  I think the DSP BMW thread was still longer then this one too.

rnoll98:

I think it's funny that nobody bats an eye over spending $2k on a set of wheels that are 2# lighter per wheel, but $1k to save 10# on a seat is written off immediately.

I agree Randy, but I fear that with the precedent this rule sets, it won't be long before we see weight specs creeping in on other items in the name of fairness.  Wheels are the most obvious starting point.   Then listen to the outcry when someone puts a depleated uranium center cap on their 8 lbs magnesium wheel.  It makes weight but has almost no effect on inertia.