Mobile Driving/Flying Cockpit with Motion and Tactile ( Build )

[Tom_Hampton]

That Crow 6 point belt looks pretty nice, but I'm curious how the anti-dive loops work.
Do you have to cinch the shoulder belts tight each time after you buckle in? Maybe not an issue if they are nicely spring loaded and release well.

Crow is not alone. Most belt manufacturers make a formula harness...schroth, sabelt, simpson, sparco, etc. I do have that actual Crow harness in my car....with 2" shoulder harnesses.

"Do you have to cinch the shoulders each time"

Yes, I suppose. But, the process isn't that much different from a GT 5/6 pt belt. Its really more that you need to loosen the shoulder belts a little in order to be able to fit the shoulder buckle through the sub-belt loop, and then buckle the whole thing together. Tightening afterwards is only required "as desired".

Here's the Schroth installation guide:

https://www.schroth.com/en/racing/service/installation-instructions/?file=files/default/pdf/racing/installation-instructions/racing-belts/ea-8-2-qg-2019-10.pdf&cid=308

See page 19 for how the sub belts feed through the lap belt and are attached to the shoulder buckles.

The process is:

1. lay sub-belts flat on seat...extending forward for easy reach, and loosen shoulder harnesses.
2. Sit in seat on top of sub-belts with belts exposed between your thighs.
3. Buckle lap-belt, and cinch.
4. Feed each sub-belts through the lap-belt loops. Pull tight to "set" the sub-belt into position.
5. Grab a shoulder harness, and feed the buckle through the loop end of the sub-belt. Buckle.
6. Repeat step 5 for other shoulder.
7. Tighten shoulder harnesses for comfort.

The whole setup is extremely comfortable. It fits and feels exactly like a rock-climbing harness.

My own plan is to setup a 4-way harness tensioner following Wotever's design. I haven't decided if it might just be two motors (pulling shoulder and lap/sub), or maybe 4 separate ones (since the motors aren't that expensive).

 

[Deleted member 1451080]

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[blekenbleu]

the design of Wotever

There are channels for it on the SimHub Discord; invitation here

 

[RCHeliguy]

Crow is not alone. Most belt manufacturers make a formula harness...schroth, sabelt, simpson, sparco, etc. I do have that actual Crow harness in my car....with 2" shoulder harnesses.

Thanks for the push. I broke down and ordered a proper 6 point belt. I did go with the Crow you linked to in red. I liked where the buckles were located.

The Sabelt knock off I have has bothered me since day one. The metal buckles are just barely inside the holes on the side of the seat, which means they can dig in. The buckles aren't worth a squat and are a pain to adjust and speaking of pain, the anti-submarine belt is problematic.

I think having a proper "real" seatbelt that is easy to cinch after I snap the belts in would be very worthwhile.

I think it's time for me to unload a bunch of stuff I've been accumulating. I can sell off my Tanaka seat belts (real) and Sabelt (knockoff) at a discount here. I have a Derek Spears button box that works great, 4 x Aura Pros that are collecting dust. Actually I think if I look around, I'll find a pretty good pile of stuff that someone else might find a good use for.

 

[anton_Chez]

Exactly what I was saying about the buckles being quite shitty on the knock off belts. The best I think you can hope for is that they do not work their way loose during use. They are not very good at all at loosening without some workarounds, which I have sort of learned to use. Tightening my lap belts are almost impossible, so when they were on I had to leave them at one length and just deal with it. The shoulder straps tightened quite normally, which is good since this is very important once strapping into the G-Belt. Loosening is annoying but not much of an issue since I unlock the cam once I'm done anyway. Added bonus of the buckles being harder to work with and loosen is that they will never work loose during a session.

I can only imagine that an authentic harness is a very good quality of life addition over a knock off. That 3x price, tag, though...

 

[RCHeliguy]

Exactly what I was saying about the buckles being quite shitty on the knock off belts. The best I think you can hope for is that they do not work their way loose during use. They are not very good at all at loosening without some workarounds, which I have sort of learned to use. Tightening my lap belts are almost impossible, so when they were on I had to leave them at one length and just deal with it. The shoulder straps tightened quite normally, which is good since this is very important once strapping into the G-Belt. Loosening is annoying but not much of an issue since I unlock the cam once I'm done anyway. Added bonus of the buckles being harder to work with and loosen is that they will never work loose during a session.

I can only imagine that an authentic harness is a very good quality of life addition over a knock off. That 3x price, tag, though...

Considering this will be my 3rd seat belt purchase, do you think this might fall into the saying, " Buy quality once or buy cheap 3 times" ?

I've heard this many times over the years and in some cases buying cheap makes sense. If I just need a tool to do one thing, I may buy cheap and if I happen to find out later that I'm going to need that tool again, I buy a forever tool.

 

[Tom_Hampton]

I can only imagine that an authentic harness is a very good quality of life addition over a knock off. That 3x price, tag, though...

Its less than the price of a BK-LFE/CT, NX3000D, NRG bucket seat, same price as a Momo/Sparco wheel...

 

[Tom_Hampton]

If I just need a tool to do one thing, I may buy cheap and if I happen to find out later that I'm going to need that tool again, I buy a forever tool.

Yep. I'm pretty much the same....buy cheap once for a one-off job, and if its truly useful, when it dies replace it with the premium. Every once in a while that "cheap-o" lasts a lot longer than I expected it too.

Sometimes the inverse is true, also....the premium version doesn't last "forever".

 

[RCHeliguy]

Its less than the price of a BK-LFE/CT, NX3000D, NRG bucket seat, same price as a Momo/Sparco wheel...

In a real race car, I would be all about safety and make sure I had a quality belt to protect me!

I think the natural inclination on a sim rig is to think none of that matters so why not buy cheap. Unfortunately cheap can also mean poor buckles that don't adjust well. The knockoff Sabelt buckles are a pain to adjust and they get loose over time. Ugh!

I never would have noticed that the belts don't stay where I put them until I got a seatbelt tensioning system that was actually pulling on them.

 

[Tom_Hampton]

I think the natural inclination on a sim rig is to think none of that matters so why not buy cheap. Unfortunately cheap can also mean poor buckles that don't adjust well. The knockoff Sabelt buckles are a pain to adjust and they get loose over time. Ugh!

I know---I have the same inclination. I bought an NRG wheel vs a Momo Mod 78. I bought a knock off ball-detent QR, vs. a Miatacage. I've considered an NRG seat...because my Sparco is too small for anyone else to use my rig (dad, BIL, daughter, etc). I think the economy works pretty well for static parts (wheels / seats, etc).

But, once you get to mechanical mechanisms, like belt buckles, and Quick-releases, even caster wheels....the "knock off quality" starts to show through. I'm not very happy with the QR that I bought. It works ok...but, I'm spoiled by real-racecar parts---I can (and have) removed and re-aligned my QR on the track at 100mph. I'd never try that with the this knock off part---its too fiddly to get on.

Similarly with the first set of casters I bought---cheapo, that seemed "ok". They worked for a couple months---Then they stopped rotating cleanly and reliably. There's nothing more frustrating than a caster that only kinda works...sometimes.

I don't mind trying the knock-offs once, and replace on failure with a quality part. That works out often enough to absorb the cost of the occasional failure. I also have the added benefit of having a source of used, expired racecar parts to repurpose. And, I know what good is supposed to look like---blessing and a curse.

 

[Deleted member 1451080]

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[RCHeliguy]

Semantics

As you said there tends to be a correlation between cost and quality, but it's not 100%.

The Crow seat belts I ordered seem to be priced well for "real" belts compared to a real Sabelt, Stroud or Sparco for example. So they aren't a top tier but are still more expensive than knock offs of the more well known brands. They "look" like a good value. I'll find out when I get mine. In this case, while I want my seat belts to look good. (I did decide to change the color to red for contrast with the seat), I couldn't justify the difference in cost to a top tier brand just for looks.

When talking about cheap vs expensive, we also tend to qualify mismatches. An expensive product that isn't quality we tend to call a rip off, and an inexpensive product that is high quality we tend to call a great value.

FWIW, I'm very happy with my NRG Prisma seat and I've been questioned about it repeatedly given my other sim rig purchases why isn't it a "real" Sparco etc.. All I can say is that I saw Barry's review of it and I thought it would work for me. He mentioned comfort a number of times and fitting larger guys than him. I've been between 177-198lbs (178 currently) and my 6 foot frame has fit very well in that seat.

 

[Deleted member 1451080]

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[Deleted member 1451080]

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[RCHeliguy]

Just starting to play with the exciters now.

I have a starting point for the DSP's but I doubt that it is finalized.
I'm happy to share where I end up on the DSP. I already posted my starting point.
I have the EPQ-304 set to just 2 clicks up on the volume as per Mr. Latte.

I have a pile of effects that Mr. Latte sent me that I'm going to be testing this weekend primarily for iRacing that I can't share at this time.

The Exciters can be used to reinforce TST effects sharing the same effects. Past that I don't have any additional advice at this time.

The interesting things about these effects is that when everything is right it just fits into the landscape of your driving experience and doesn't jump out at you and then when you turn it off, it really hits you. Obviously some effects do jump out at you a bit, but a lot of it is ambience.

 

[Deleted member 1451080]

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[HoiHman]

Exciters are great, they have brought (very unexpected) the engine vibrations i was looking for all these years.
This just might also due to the GS-5 panels which are pretty isolated themselves with only a hinge on one side.

@RCHeliguy are you planning to use them for other effects besides RPM and gearshift?

 

[Tom_Hampton]

and BTW, when you race IRL, believe me the seat belt is most probably one of the cheapest item in your car and cost. Just think about the cost for a new clutch or for the tires alone during a race weekend….And on top of that you don’t have the choice to have a low quality as they have to be homologated by the FIA. Well at least if you race in FIA races…

I'm somewhat aware...ff to 0:45s

T7 at Texas World Speedway....

 

[RCHeliguy]

Exciters are great, they have brought (very unexpected) the engine vibrations i was looking for all these years.
This just might also due to the GS-5 panels which are pretty isolated themselves with only a hinge on one side.

@RCHeliguy are you planning to use them for other effects besides RPM and gearshift?

Yes

FWIW I've initially dialed the iRacing profile to a good starting place to my liking Very nice!

In the morning I'll try it again fresh. Unfortunately people are extremely subjective and not consistent about how they perceive things. I'm going to see how it feels to me in the morning, same settings, same car, same track and odds are that something won't feel right to me.

What I want is the relative strengths between effects tweaked to taste so that when I come back to it day after day I tend to only tweak the overall slider.

The exciters make the experience more consistent. It's like having matching transducers in the front and back that behave the same way. They extend the overall feeling to the rest of the seat.

There are a LOT of things that I could tweak and I'm only adjusting at the lowest levels when something isn't coming through for some reason the way I think that piece of an effect should. Mostly I'm boosting the BK-CT signals, and it may be a difference in our DSP curves or CT vs LFE.

I also don't want to mess things up because there are a lot of subtle cues in there.

I think my FFB is a probably just a bit too high right now. I need to get more seat time to get my FFB endurance back. BTW I'm not sure if there was an SC2 software/firmware update or a change in iRacing, but if you hit a wall, the power instantly drops so I can hold on to the steering wheel without worry. In fact if I do let go of the wheel before it hits a wall, the steering wheel's FFB cuts out completely and comes back after a brief period. Have any of you noticed this in other sims?

 

[Deleted member 1451080]

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