Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

wondering if anyone has tried the Crash Pad seat insert made by 802 solutions,if so what did you think? Worth the money or are there other options.

I still want somebody to explain to me how safe that thing really is...if I have my belts tight and then I compress what I am sitting on an inch aren't my belts now loose as heck?

Many sanctions for many years had rules limiting how much padding a seat could have in it for just that reason...was a really common rule in drag racing.

If reducing spinal injury was really so simple as putting a cushion under your butt, why the heck haven't Butlerbuilt or Kirkey been doing it for years and years?

Loose is when you hit the wall with the rear of the
car, tight is when you hit the wall with the front of
the car. Horsepower is how fast you hit the wall and
torque is how far you move the wall.

Butler Built does have an insert available for their seats.  It is a DYI kit that is about $280.00, which you mix and pour into a bag that is taped to your seat which then molds itself to your contour when you are sitting on it.  I have one for my seat and its awesome.  I had the rear hit the seat twice this year in crashes and not once did I even feel it.    I made sure to get about 2-3 inches under my butt when we were pouring it.

It is a high impact energy foam so it does not collapse simply by pushing down on it like a seat cushion does in your car. 

As far as the crash pad  offered.  I have seen it at some of the tracks, but don;t know many guys that are using it but it does seem like a decent solution out there.  It is a high desity foam as well, but to mee didn't seem as firm as what I have in my seat.  Of course that is my opinion.

Yeah I have seen the Butlerbuilt kits... looks like a DIY version of how indycar seats are made to fit each particular driver. Really neat deal.

My next question to JCW... when you added the foam to your seat did that change the way the seat fit you as far as where the rib shoulder and head supports hit your body? And did it make you feel like you weren't as deep in the seat both down and back? And if somebody was already fit decent in a cockpit wouldnt they need to go to a tall cage car after using the insert kit or does it compress enough when you pour it that it really doesn't change where you are in relation to the car? 

Loose is when you hit the wall with the rear of the
car, tight is when you hit the wall with the front of
the car. Horsepower is how fast you hit the wall and
torque is how far you move the wall.

No it did not change the way I fit in the seat.  It didn't increase my head height enough to make any difference. It is a 2 part liquit that when mixed together will foam and harden.  When the materials are poured into the bag, it fills the gaps.  It allows you to get you comfortable and get the desired level of protection.

Hi,

I'm Dave from 802 Solutions. I saw drivers getting compression fractures and being out of racing for months or more with this really serious injury. I didn't want to get hurt so Denny and I did a lot of research to figure out the problem find a way to reduce the risk. We looked at moving seat mounts and all kinds of stuff . What we came up with was simple but the most effective way to deal with the problem. We used the Crash Pad material for several seasons and decided to make an adjustable product available for all.

Sorry this is long but I want you to understand the whole issue and everything interrelates.

Cost of the Crash Pad:
We used the best materials available and they are expensive. We keep overhead low (even the mice are hunchback) to keep the price as low as possible without compromising the performance and durability.

So having said that, here's some answers to the questions.

Belt tightness. It was one of my questions and concerns when I decided to use the material. It turns out not to be a problem. The material will preload when you sit on it and belt in. When your're in place, the material pushes back equal to the weight applied. It's a factor of force per square inch and the number of square inches under you, extending under the legs to the front of the seat spreads support and impact resistance of a large area.

I know some guys use ratchets or have crew pull the lap belt really tight and if they compress the material more than about 40% they should add some thickness to the bottom to maintain the space.

Fact is that belts actually stretch about 25% in a crash and that's part of why you don't break your collar bone or shoulders when you go into the belts.

Simply put, Impact force equals the energy of motion divided by distance (or time). The stretching belts increases the stopping distance of your body and that reduces the force. The thickness of the Crash Pad does the same thing. The material has a constant resistance during the very high speed compression of impact. Of all the materials tested it reduced the forces in the dummy spine the best.

So belts don't feel loose with the crash pad, they feel the same tightness to me and others that have used the Crash Pad. The thing that seems contrary to what you think and have been taught is that you need space to move in the seat. When the seat suddenly stops you need to have some space and resistance to slow down. The belts have always provided that for forward and up motion of the body for us, without us realizing it.

The problem is that in most directions your body can bend and squish and absorb impact but the spine is a stack of bones from your tailbone to your head. It can absorb about 10G of vertical down impact compression. Beyond about 14G, it runs out of compressibility and bones start to crash and crush. And remember that your whole wiring harness is inside those bones.

Anyway, when you belt the end of your spine to your good solid seat and it's bolted firm to the frame (and the bottom of the frame is the most rigid part of the car), when the frame bottom drops to the track it stops dead, the seat stops dead and the bottom of your spine stops dead. The rest of your body, head and helmet are still moving down and that weight, multiplied by the G force, is all being supported by the spine which will be compressed until something gives.

To make matters worse, the containment seat that helps reduce the risk of most other injuries actually holds the spine in a very straight line which optimizes vertical down forces on the spine.

So if material that responds correctly in the tenth of a second or less is under you (i.e. Crash Pad), it gives you some space to slow down and that distance divided into the energy of your motion that we talked about before, reduces the impact force on your spine when compared to the nothing, of being strapped tight to the rigid seat bottom.

In other words, compared to nothing in the seat, a couple inches makes a big mathematical difference in reducing the force on the spine... it's a direct proportion. The more distance to slow you, the less force. Doubling the stopping distance will cut the force in half. There's a lot more to it, but that's the basic concept that makes a little space under you go a long way ( and more space is better).

Now let me give an opinion on the mix and pour-in foams. It's an opinion because there are so many variables.

The compression resistance of a material, at very high speeds (one tenth second) is the characteristic that reduces impact force. Just like all shocks are different, all materials react different.

The pour in foams didn't reduce spinal impact as well in the tests done. But there are so many variables that the testing could come out different with each pour.

One thing is that sculptured material (even the material we use) perform much worse when matched to the contour of the test dummy. The thinking is that the preload of a flat sheet of material creates a uniform supporting force instead of uniform density from a contour cut. Somehow the preloaded flat sheet performed considerably better than a uniform density like a contour cut or a pour-in would be.

A pour in will or should have similar density across the pour. But that is where the problem starts with the pour-in materials. The characteristics of the pour can vary greatly depending on many factors including: uniformity of the mix, duration of the mix time, time between one part of the mix becoming mixed before other parts, temperature of the mix, humidity, barometric pressure, temperature of the seat, heat sink effect of the seat changing outer parts cure temp more than inner, cure of one area while adjacent is being filled, etc, etc, etc. There are so many variables in a pour, in the field, that there is no certainty what the characteristics will be so we avoided that approach for ourselves.

The material we use is factory made under well controlled conditions and is uniform and within a specification tolerance. It is all the same and always the same. 

The pour-in foam is very good to fill the gaps in a seat but it is an unknown for the compression space under your spine. Some have put Crash Pad material in the bottom and lower back and then poured in for the rest of the seat.

It's important to have material in the lumbar area. We found that because the pelvis rotates and the lower back bends out in a compression event, that a piece of material (1" thick or more) in that area will absorb some of the downward motion and reduce impact forces on the spine.

Racers are a wait and see bunch. We also know that a drivers seat is a personal fit and seating location is important to a driver. Yes you have to be raised up in the seat 1 1/2" or more (the more the better) to reduce spinal impact forces, and the right compressible material is what reduces the impact force. We understand that it will take time for everyone to understand the problem and what's needed to address it. There will be a lot of misinformation and crazy ideas. It's a change and no one likes change... until they are used to the new way and then the old way seems crazy (they didn't want to add roll cages to sprint cars and midgets back in the day).

We found the best material for the application and put together the best piece we could for all to use.

It's hard to prove a negative so I can't say who didn't get hurt, but Denny and I have dumped a sprinter enough times to feel the difference with this stuff. That's why we formed the company and made the product.