I have on 03 Evo and i have no chime... only a little light stays on when the factory seatbelt isnt in.

 

must be nice, hopefully i can figure something out.

 

Although Im too lazy to read the whole post

There are 2 things that make harnesses unsafe for a street driver without a cage for re-enforcement

1) Side impact, if you get into a side impact crash with stock seatbelts you have the ability to be pushed more into the middle of the car. With harnesses, you will not have enough room to move to the middle because of how "strapped" down you are, thus you get crushed. That is without a cage, but if you do add a cage, now you must consider your head smashing into the cage arond the b pillar, even with padding on the cage.

2) Mounting location for shoulder straps. If you mount them low, like on the floor of the car; during a crash there will be a tremendous amount of force applied on the top of your shoulders, compressing your spine = BAD. That is why they have harness bars that allow the harnesses to be strapped to around shoulder height. BUT, for short people like me my shoulders are lower than the holes in my sparco seat so unless the "spine compression" force was so bad it broke my seat, I should be theoretically O.K.

I wouldnt really reccomend harnesses for any street cars, unless it is the 3 point kind that clips into the seatbelt clips in the back seat, because it is removeable and you could use it for the track and stock seatbelt for the street.

I trust the industry with the stock 3 point seatbelt, and if you require a tighter fit for a street car that is raced on weekends than you can use those new locking dealies for any stock 3 point seatbelt.

 

there's lots of people that say running a harness without a cage is bad... it's bad if you roll your car... that's the only situation where it's bad. the fear is that it will hold you in place and your head/neck will be crushed by the collapsing roof.

so with that said... i'm not the tallest evo owner, i'm 5'7" and i run a sparco competition harness all day long with my sparco corsa seat mounted at stock ride height and i'm worried least about getting my head crushed, much more worried about other things...

it all depends on your level of commitment, running a harness all the time is a pain, you must adjust everytime you get in the car, people can't sit behind you unless you got a harness bar which i don't like the idea of (i'll qualify this... skinny friends can sit behind you if they don't scoot their buttcheeks). but at least releasing is always fast, camlocks are SO cool and it'll hold you tighter than.... uhm... whatever it'll hold you tight.

btw... side impact is bs to a certain extent... if you get hit in the side you will go towards the side you got hit at because the car will move and you will move later, in this case the harness is better it'll keep you from being tossed into the thing that hit you and will move you more uniformly with the car. now... if you get hit SO hard that the thing comes barrelling through the door and hits you... then the harness is bad because it'll hold you in place... but this situation is all bad unless you have no arms and no legs beecause your legs and arms will get stuck no matter what anyway, and if you have no arms and legs... we all know yer not driving.

i don't know anyone that is running their harness to the ground... that's pretty much the most unrecommended thing, you're suppose to mount them to the stock belt locations in the rear seats... not the baby seat mounts, those arne't gonna hold you big guy. make sure you put them in the lower seat belt mounts of the rear seats, or harness bar... or cage. btw... if you want to bolt in... then you get long tail harness, if you wanna strap to a bar then you get short tail without eye bolts.

btw... i took out my stock belts and saved myself the harness weight and then proceeded to take apart my dash and unplug the srs light... i'm not condoning this as i know it is not the safest or most sane thing to do... but it's possible... so i'm puttin' it out there.