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A Small Price to Pay
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Two industry leaders explain the
importance of re-certifying driver restraint assemblies
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By Brian Wood Photos by/courtesy of Stroud Safety, Taylor Motorsports Products, Roger Richards and Brian Wood |
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There isn’t much doubt that drag racing on any level is an expensive proposition, and the money spent to go faster, whether it be in a footbrake car or a full-race alcohol or nitro machine, can add up quicker than most racers care to admit.
Yet, while a great number of these same racers will shell out whatever it takes to get that new block or set of pistons or whatever, it’s surprising how many of them kick up a huge fuss when it comes to re-certifying their seat belts every two years. That’s the time frame mandated by SFI, a non-profit organization established to issue and administer standards for all kinds of specialty/performance automotive and racing equipment. SFI is funded by companies which voluntarily participate in the specs program, along with financial support from member sanctioning bodies. SFI specs cover everything from chassis to clutch assemblies, fire suits, bell housings, wheels, roll cages, engine restraint devices and lots more. In fact, their spec program now covers over 80 items.
The standard that applies to safety belts is SFI Specification 16.1. The spec defines a driver restraint assembly and outlines basic design dimensions and requirements. It also explains the testing procedures in detail and how to interpret the test results to determine if the product meets the required criteria and thus passes the test.
While most racers strictly comply with SFI specs when they relate to chassis or other hardware applications, however, many think the two-year period on seat belts is too short and often go so far as to accuse the manufacturers of safety products of trying to grab some more of their precious racing money unnecessarily. Nothing could be farther from the truth. There is a very real safety issue here, and hopefully we will be able to shed some light on the seriousness of the situation with the help of two industry leaders, Bob Stroud, of Stroud Safety in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and Dennis Taylor, of Taylor Motorsports Products, in Anaheim, California.
“Let me start by saying that not every company re-certify their seat belts,” said Stroud. “Participation in the SFI program is purely voluntary, of course, so this doesn’t mean that all manufacturers not in the program necessarily produce inferior belts. But it does mean that racers who buy these belts have no option but to pitch them in the dumpster after two years. We at Stroud consider ourselves a reputable company, and therefore we do re-certify our belts. Re-certifying or re-webbing belts is not done because we want to grab more money from the racers – It’s done because we want to keep the racers in one piece.
“Contrary to popular belief, we don’t just sew a new tag on the belts and send them back. By regulation, we have to cut all the old webbing off and replace it with new material. We also replace any hardware that needs to be changed out due to damage or alteration. “The reason we re-certify any product is due to abuse and/or exposure and the reason we re-web seat belts is really pretty simple. Ultraviolet light, sunlight in other words, destroys nylon and other synthetics such as polyester. I can take a brand-new nylon parachute, lay it out on the front lawn at eight o’clock in the morning and come back at noon and rip holes in it with my fingers.
“Now that may be a slight exaggeration, but it’s not far off, and that’s an example of just how fast the material is degraded due to the effects of UV light. It’s pretty easy to see how the material is affected by looking at a set of three or four-year-old belts and seeing how the color is different on each side. This is a lot more than just fading because as it’s washing out the color it’s also killing the nylon.
“When Dupont ran tests on the Nylon 6.6 material used in seat belts at their test facility in Florida, they found that after seven days of non-stop exposure to sunlight the webbing lost 60% of its strength. Relate that to dirt track cars, for example, which may sit on an open trailer in a backyard all year long. In that type of racing, it’s not a matter of if you’ll crash but rather when you’ll crash, and the results can be catastrophic. “In the case of seat belts installed in a drag car that has been involved in a heavy crash, both NHRA and IHRA will cut the SFI tags off the belts immediately to prevent them from being used again. They do that so the belts will be returned to the manufacturer for analysis. Most reputable manufacturers have a policy for dealing with belts that have been subjected to strain in a wreck. At Stroud, we will inspect the belts thoroughly to see what we can learn from the resulting stress and then dispose of them as a general rule.
“There have been attempts to develop or utilize materials that will last longer in seat belt applications, such as Kevlar, but because there is no elasticity in these materials they are not suitable. A seat belt has to stretch, and with Kevlar, for example, any stretch you may get is mechanical. In other words, it has to be woven in, whereas in Nylon and Polyester stretch is a property of the material itself. This elasticity actually slows you down in an impact, and although it’s only measured in microseconds, it does exist as a function of the material.
“The bottom line here is that Kevlar, for all its strength, is also degraded by exposure and stress, and when it fails it fails catastrophically. With Nylon, you weave it, stretch it, rub it and eventually you see fuzzies and tears and so on, but Kevlar can be perfect one second and completely gone the next. It’s all or nothing, and that can be a real problem, as you can imagine. You can actually break Kevlar if you bend it back and forth enough. “Also, I’d like to point out that while some people will tell you that polyester belts are better in UV light than Nylon, and 10 years ago that may have been true, developments in Nylon manufacture have actually made it more durable than Polyester when it comes to UV damage.
“Again, I want to reiterate that not all manufacturers re-certify their products, and unfortunately, when they say it’s not about money, rest assured it’s all about money. A lot of manufacturers don’t actually build their own belts anymore; they import them from offshore, so in reality they have no way of re-doing the belts they sell anyway.
“On the other hand, a lot of companies do re-certify their belts, and keep in mind that only the original manufacturer of ‘brand-x’ belts can re-certify ‘brand-x’ belts. Each manufacturer can choose to re-certify or not re-certify his own belts, but he can’t do anyone else’s. Not that we would ever want to recertify anyone else’s belts for liability reasons, but we’re forbidden by our SFI contract from doing it. “Belts can be sold without SFI certification, but I have no idea while anyone would even consider buying such a thing. A couple of years ago some people in our local area were advertising that their safety equipment was ‘just as good as.’ No. it’s not. You just don’t want some backyard operator thinking ‘I can sew that.” No, he can’t. “The testing for this stuff is very intensive and very expensive, and the procedures we go through to get our belts and other products tested are just unbelievable. Besides, there are over 40 reputable manufacturers out there, so why would somebody put their life on the line just to tray and save a few bucks? I strongly recommend to all racers that they stay with the guys who have done the testing and have the SFI tag on their products – after all, it’s your butt that’s on the line. If you buy a $10.00 set of seatbelts, then that’s likely what your body is worth to you.
“We look at re-certifying our belts as a major part of the service we provide to our customers. Would you really want to buy a set of belts from a guy who just takes your money and doesn’t plan to ever see you again? I don’t care if it’s the biggest company in the business or the smallest – everybody makes seatbelts, but part of what you’re paying for is service, and we try to take care of our customers at all times. “And regardless of what some people think, we don’t just re-tag the webbing after two years – it’s completely cut off and replaced, per SFI mandate. Unfortunately, we hear a lot of moaning about the need to re-certify, that it’s just a way to get a few more bucks from racers, but nothing could be further from the truth. Most people will listen when you tell them the facts, but it’s a well-known fact in the racing industry that if they weren’t required, half the drivers wouldn’t wear seat belts or helmets, because there’s no way they are ever going to crash. If you don’t believe it, just ask them. “We’ve been accused of a lot of things, but unfortunately a lot of racers think the safety and/or performance industry needs to support their hobby. No, it doesn’t. This is their hobby and they need to pay for it, just like everybody else. This is how we put food on the table, after all. To them, this is just a way for us to make money, but to us it’s a way to hopefully keep them out of the emergency room. Once you explain the facts to them, 99.9 % of them will say ‘no-one ever told me that before.’
“We don’t mind sharing our data, because we want to provide safe products to racers. Don’t be afraid to ask people offering cheap belts if their stuff is made in China or Taiwan or wherever. If you come across anyone who doesn’t want to talk about what they do, back away in a hurry because they are undoubtedly hiding something. I’m not necessarily being pro-American here, but if you’re going to sell as a manufacturer, then manufacture your own product. Otherwise, they have no control over what’s being made at all. “So just be sure you deal with a reputable company, and be sure their products have current SFI tags, which proves that they have met certain requirements pertaining to their manufacturing and testing. We hear quite often, especially from the circle track guy, that they bought a set of surplus belts from somebody that were just as good as so and so’s belts. Well, the plain fact is that they aren’t just as good, and they never will be. “Trust me - we don’t make any money when we recertify belts, because the labor and material required to re-web belts basically puts is in a break-even position at best. There’s no reason to just throw belts away after two years, however, so we recertify belts in order to provide a service to our customers and hopefully keep them coming back to Stroud.” Dennis Taylor, from his office in California, echoed the sentiments of Bob Stroud, saying “you have to understand what’s involved in the re-certification process. It involves replacing all of the webbing, which up to recently was Nylon but now includes Polyester, which is degraded by exposure to sunlight and other abuse. The process also involves inspection and replacement of any pieces of belt hardware that is not up to our standards.
“After testing in the lab, as well as in on-track racing situations, SFI came up with the two-year re-certification requirement. This was put onto effect because no manufacturer really knows what kind of environment the belts live in, after all. For example, a dirt late model guy might haul his car home from a race and wash the car down with a hose. The belts get soaked with water, and if the car is then left out in the sun on an open trailer, there are all kinds of things working against the integrity of the webbing. Since we have no way of knowing what the belts are exposed to on a daily basis, and knowing how fast the materials deteriorate, the two-year time frame was determined to be optimal. “Also, it should be noted that due to the litigious society we live in these days, hardware manufacturers are not real happy that we re-certify these belts over and over again, replacing the webbing every two years while retaining the same hardware. It may come to be at some point in time that there is just one re-certification allowed and then the product would no longer be allowed in competition.
“The problem with that is how it would affect the guy who doesn’t race on a regular basis. He may race five or six times one year and then sit out a year due to lack of money or whatever. He then finds himself in the position of being able to race four or five times the following year. This becomes an expensive proposition for him, and where he fits into the equation is still something that has to be worked out. “I do want to address the fact that seat belt re-certification seems to be the biggest reason for bitching and moaning among racers. Many of them have the misconception that we do it so that we can all make more money, but I’ll tell you here and now that we’d be lucky to break even on the deal. We charge $75.00 to recert belts, and since our labor rate is $75.00 an hour and it takes an hour or more to do the work, plus the cost of material, adding new tags and testing all the hardware, well, you get the point. We do it simply as a service to our customers. “It’s hard to believe how racers will complain about a product that costs the least amount of money to buy and does the most important job in a race car. You can buy belts from just under $100.00 to down around $50.00 and yet racers complain about it. They’ll spend more than that taking the crew out to dinner and drinks after a race, but they just don’t look at it that way.” “We have no desire to grab any racer’s money, but we
certainly do have a desire to keep them out of the hospital. As
long as they’ll let us recertify our own products, we certainly
will, because we are dedicated to keeping our customers as safe
and satisfied as possible.” The purchase of belts should be based on more important criteria than whether or not the color matches the car. One way to tell if one manufacturer's restraint assembly is more reliable than another's is to look for belts that are certified to meet performance specifications. Manufacturers whose products pass the standard laboratory tests participate in the SFI Foundation, Inc.'s certification program. Manufacturers of equipment are the primary users of SFI standards. Some standards are adopted as part of the rules of race sanctioning bodies. Ultimately, the consumer benefits from the program because it establishes recognized levels of performance or quality for a product such as driver restraint assemblies.
Once a product is passed, the manufacturer installs SFI certification tags on the belts which display the date of manufacture. The purpose of the dated certification tags is to enable drivers and race officials to easily determine when the belts reach their 2-year life span. One of the most important requirements of the specification states that the useful life of the webbing in the straps of the restraint assembly shall not exceed two years and they must be replaced at or before that time. Only the original manufacturer can reweb an assembly prior to recertifying. Restraints must be maintained, inspected, and replaced or re-webbed every two years because they degenerate from exposure to the elements and over time. Prolonged exposure of seat belt webbing and thread to sunlight can cause degradation of the fibers and loss of restraint integrity. The rate at which the breaking strength of the webbing decreases with outdoor exposure is illustrated in the graph below. The webbing used in motorsports restraints is typically made with Dupont Nylon 6-6 or a similar product. According to the data, the webbing loses about half of its strength in one year.
With this kind of rapid deterioration, it is obvious why replacing the webbing every two years is essential to driver safety. Old and weakened belts could easily snap under the loads imposed upon them in an accident situation. Failure to properly restrain the driver in a crash would have devastating consequences. That makes it pretty plain, doesn’t it? It’s your health and happiness we’re talking about here, so laying out less than a hundred bucks every two years seems like a small price to pay. It’s about time the reputable people in the safety industry get some credit. After all, they’re trying to look out for you, often at their own expense when it comes to recertifying belts, so let’s show them some appreciation for everything they do. As Bob Stroud said, it’s your butt that’s on the line.
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