07musclemustang

ps the guy isnt looking for a car for the wife, hes looking for a car and the wife is trying to make excuses that the car will not do. help the guy out by giving him real information.
I dont know if you can retrofit side seat airbags in an older stang but really why would you? 80% of collisions are head on and our cars are "down and under styles" and even with them really seatbelts and front airbags dont do much... its more about foot placement...
I really dont wanna get to into it but OP if your really interested PM me and i would love to give a in depth explanation from a medics view who has seen god knows how many wrecks

Orion_240

I was going to argue with above posts but it would be a waste of time!

OP, just get a 2005+ with side air bags! They made THOUSANDS of them! Your selection should not be limited at all.
You wouldn't retrofit side airbags into a used car. It isn't done.
Get a used car with airbags.
EOT!

topbliss

I can tell you it will be VERY costly to install side air bags and heated seats. I will bet for a Ford dealer to do it will cost about $2500-3000. You will need switches, wiring, different computer, seats.. forget it. Buy another car with them already done

turtlevette

On first pass i was thinking just get 2 front seats with airbags and heat and bolt them in, but after thinking about it more, i realized there also needs to be wiring harnesses too which is still not a big deal. Its the electronics that set the bags off that could be a big deal. If there are an extra set of accelerometers/impact detectors and dedicated computers or software to detect a side impact, it gets to the point of overwhelming effort.

I could ask a dealer about it, but i bet most dealers wouldn't even know or want to mess with the liability. The guys on forums like this usually know more about the car.

We'll just have to get a car with them already installed.

Norm Peterson

You've mentioned that adding a cage to a street-driven car is "safer" twice, and you've been wrong both times. I'm only going to answer once.

Cliff's Notes version - if you have a cage in your car everybody in that car needs at minimum to be wearing a helmet. Cage tube padding does not mean squat to an unhelmeted head, and the space that the tubes occupy reduces the clearance space into which heads and other body parts will move during an accident.

I am truly surprised that you were not aware of this. If you don't want to take my word for it, I can direct you to a few racers and a couple of race car fabricators (who will all tell you pretty much the same thing).


Norm

07musclemustang

if the occupant is restrained via a seat belt the only thing the head will hit on a side impact is glass.. tempered glass that is. I dont know what cage has tubes running at head hight across the side... well maybe if your freakishly tall. The side tubes run allong the lower portion of the door stopping intrusion of the other object.
there will still be all 3 aspects of the crash occuring and all to the same effect. but intrusion of the object will be minimal.. thus minimzing extraccation times, compression injurys and compartment syndrome...
ok scenario, Tbone into my drivers door, i bend sideways to the left, head goes through the glass, internal organs get flung around (hopefully still inside the body) body speeds up and obsorbs some force of the impact and flings to the right, organs then move to the right, organs smash against the right side of body, body centers.
With a cage it will stop the car from entering your car and keep you safe in the car. Airbag will try to cushin any intrusion and try to keep the glass off you (in a really half asses manner. Its more so there to protect you from the B pilar really. But what do i know, I just used to teach crash dynamics to a fresh batch of EMTs every 3 months.
oh sorry forgot about limbs... yeah the left arm would proabaly be busted but thats usually fixable...
as for an aurestrained driver bouncing around in the car.... oooohh that wouldnt be good at all

Norm Peterson

Human bodies stretch and contort, belts stretch, seats bend and their backs sometimes collapse (particularly when the car is rear-ended with a heavy enough impact). The point here being that the static belted occupant position relative to everything else does not provide the full picture. So when you put a hard tube into the "deceleration space" required by whatever amount of stretching and other deformations are taking place, that tube will in fact be contacted and contacted with greater force than the original car structure would have been. Simple physics at work. I'm not saying that all accidents will involve contact with a tube, just that it is more likely than striking existing structure. And in cases where original structure would have been contacted or nearly so - tube contact will almost certainly result in more serious injury.

That a full cage complete with NASCAR door bars will do a better job of keeping something from intruding into the passenger cell is not really the issue (lesser cages may not even do that). Keeping heads away from contact with OE B-pillars and roof structure, halo bars, main hoops, and down bars in less severe accidents is. A side impact at levels that current side impact protection will successfully resist major intrusion from is still more than enough to toss the occupants' heads laterally and it may not be glass that they strike. That's what the side airbags are intended to mitigate, not intrusion. We may be mostly in agreement on this point.

A long time ago, I punched out the driver side window with my own head when the left rear quarter of my car was hit and the car spun around as a result. A cage would not only not have helped any; it would have been something else to hit. I hadn't thought about this until just now in this very discussion, but if that car had had side air bags I might have had an abrasion instead of a small cut and wouldn't have been picking fragments of tempered glass out from under my left eyelids some hours and 150 miles later (missed by the hospital emergency staff and yeah, I was lucky).

There are a number of discussions involving cage and roll bar design over at Corner-Carvers. Many of those guys are serious racers and there is a lot of depth to the technical knowledge over there. Worth a look.


Norm

07musclemustang

well norm your right to a point and we agree to a point but i still believe that a cage is better
issues i have with your statments..
bodys dont reall stretch that much.. if it does then the tendons whould have to rip or rupture and the ligiments would pull the muscle off the bone... you would again have a worse injury from the "stretch" yes bones break, yes you can contort. but also seatbelts dont stretch they have an amount of movement before they lock and take up slack in the hip belt.
the cage will do more for a roll over, front end, rear end, and t bone collision IMO
the only situation i can see where it could be worse is in a off angle spinning collision as yours was. Yes the side airbag will limit the glass on you but really its not too big of a deal its tempered and designed to break outwards. (that being said you will still get glass on you no matter what) Im more concerned with getting out of the car as soon as possible and getting to the hospital as soon as possible.
It the end there are only really 2 types of wrecks...
the ones that it doesnt matter at all if you have side impact airbags. The ones your gonna walk away from with some bumps and bruises and maybe a cut or two and maybe a busted bone or two but still you can walk away from.
2nd is the type your either gonna die or pretty much wish you did, a side impact air bag isnt gonna do much here either. you may see some benifit from the roll cage, increased cabin structure and less chance of entrapment. allowing me to get to the big building with the H on the side of it quicker...
Im not saying that there is no use for a side air bag, simply saying for the 2-3+ thousand bucks to retrofit it... put in a cage and much better IMO for overall safety and increased chance of quality of life after a wreck.
Im not saying that its impossible the hit a bar during the deceleration phase of the collision only that probablility/ injury/ benifit its still on top for me..
either way i dont have side airbags, i dont have a cage, If im in a wreck bad enough to really NEED either... just let me go man... DNR

07musclemustang

Norm, you answered twice already... will there be more??

Sorry man had to do it..
also please know its not a pissing contest and i have the highest respect for you and your huge enginering brain.