- harness bolt for FIA rollbar?

[SLR No.77]

Does anyone have a spare or can someone point me in the direction where I can get a shorter bolt for the Caterham harness shoulder straps. My car's always had full length (over-long) bolts for the shoulder straps but it's impossible to remove/refit the LH passenger harness bolt without lifting the roll bar up ... which is a complete PITA! I suspect it's the same bolt as is used for the waist belts but Caterham can't supply either without a complete harness.

Stu.

[paul richards]

Stu. I may have one. It’s a 7/16th UNF bolt. I’ll have a look later. 

[Shortshift]

Is there a reason why you can't shorten the standard bolt that you have, Stu?

James

[Paul Mason]

I've just bought some nuts and bolts from Westfield fasteners who seemed to have a good range of imperial sizes (both size and length), decent prices and really quick delivery

[Paul Mason]

Just checked Stu, ones I bought are 5/16ths UNF I'm afraid, would have sent a couple otherwise

[SLR No.77]

All sorted, big thanks to Paul. 

Caterham told me they can only supply the long ones. For anyone with a single diagonal FIA bar you need to source a short one, or lift the LH end of the rollbar around 15mm which enables the long bolt to be dropped in. This obviously leads to the question of whether the reduced-head bolts have been fitted vertically into the main bar legs above the rear shocks. They often aren't fitted and whether this is due to the difficulty fitting the long harness bolts is hard to say, but I'd certainly suggest that for anyone who has a single diagonal FIA bar and isn't sure whether the reduced head bolts are fitted, check the length of the passenger LH harness bolt by having a grope in the boot on the underside of the top rail. If it's a long bolt it might be worth investigating further.

Stu.