Dragster chassis safety

Aloha All
First, I wish to express my condolence's to the Niver family for their loss of Mark.

This writing is to ALERT chassis owners of a possible safety issue concerning frontal impact and steering shaft contact to a driver.

I obtained a Federal Mogul RED chassis awhile ago, (professionally built) I brought it to Hawaii and have now reworked the chassis to current S.F.I. spec's.. One of the upgrade's was an addition to the upper crossbar that supports the steering shaft, just behind the firewall to facilitate a K-BRACE addition. On the car that I acquired there was only a 3"x3" aluminum pad, 1/4" in thickness bolted to the single cross-member with a through hole for the steering shaft that has a dampener, stop pad welded onto the shaft on the forward side on this location. My observation was that in a frontal impact there was nothing to stop the steering shaft from coming back into my chest except for a 1/4" piece of 6061 aluminum. My solution to solve this safety issue was to incorporate into the K-Brace a 3" length of 1" chromemoly tubing for the steering shaft
to continue through, just behind the original aluminum support. I am not knowledgeable to current chassis builders methods for this type of impact prevention. But!! This modification may prevent other future fatal accidents.

I have pictures of this modification and will supply them to all interested party's. I can be contacted through this site or you can email me at cobeen@hawaii.rr.com

Mahalo,& Drive safe
"Just an old time drag racer in a pineapple field" Doug Cobeen