i finished up the hood today and will blow it apart later this week to gap the doors and the fenders. so far i have just got the contours on the door and fenders to match. i now need to go back and weld up the relief cuts and then spend a lot of time evening out the gaps.
i also got the harness bar bent up and the seats lowered. the seats ended up dropping 1 3/4 in the rear and about 3/4 up front. i wanted the base rocked back a little and the new mounts do that really well. my head is now much further from the roof and i think the seats look a lot better in the car as well. i dont like seats that are too tall, and these seem to fit good. as far as the harness bar, the plan is to make it removable and use the permanent stubs to mount my 3 point belts. i would really like to make it so that i dont have to remove the 3pts to mount the bar, but im not thinking its going to work out that way. im VERY concerned with the stubs sticking out past the door panel and becoming an object that a rear seat passenger could strike their head on. i have a few ideas to keep them recessed with very little (<1") exposed. more to come.
i know a lot of guys dont like screwing with safety systems that the oem put in their cars (for very good reasons), but i have every bit of confidence that the plan is extremely over engineered. the amount of weld surface holding the stubs and the strength of the material that its being welded to only reinforce my confidence. one only has to look under the car near the rear seat to find a 1/8" plate on the underside of the sheetmetal that the seatbelts bolt to. this plate spreads the load on the stock sheemetal floor and was suffiicent enough that 4 bolts held 3 bodies. since im already having to do the same thing on my trans tunnel to get the inside bolts for the front seats, im not worried about having to do it for the harness bar.
some may question the belt angle needed to achieve my goals. after a lot of research, ive found that the best angle is 0*. either up or down starts to comprimise the belts ability to do its job, and too far down can compress the spine as well. i have read and been told by a couple different seat belt manufactures and a seat company that anything less than 20* is perfectly acceptable. with my 6'3" frame, im the worst case scenario in my car. my shoulder height with the new seat brackets is 24" from a reference point. the center of the tubing is at about 21.5" and im thinking that i can get the belt at somewhere north of 20". the belt will also mount 16" behind my shoulder. the math shows ~14* for the 4" drop and allows a 5.82" drop before i hit 20*. i think im well within the spec. i had considered the belt slipping off my shoulder due to its lower height, but mockup shows that with the distance behind the shoulder this doesnt even come close to happening.
photobucket is down right now, so i'll post up some pics when i can.
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