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I am wondering what types of angles you guys with a racing harness bolted to the rear seat belt locations are getting without the use of a harness bar. I have not checked it out yet, but am just trying to get an idea of if I can get a safe angle without the harness bar. I am hearing a couple of different angles from as little as -5 to -45 deg.

 
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pulled this off the takata website

if you intend on mounting them directly to the rear floor, your back is gunna end up like an accordian.

mount them as far back as possible and you should be good

 
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Yeah I was going to mount them were the rear seat belts mount which is where most people mount them. I have seen a ton of different recomendations on the exact angle. I think the safe limit is -45 deg for your back. The thing is some seats may not hold up to the tension from the belt in a crash at anything below -20 deg. This is why I have seen from -5 deg (need a harness bar for almost any application) to -45 deg ( I think a civic mounted in the way described above shoudl be above this angle.)

 
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there is a company called dg industries http://www.dgiautomotive.com/ that sells the harness bar for our car but I believe corsport or robearracing carries there stuff for cheaper but I don't think it is listed on the site you might have to call them and autopower makes a series of roll bars that the harness can be mounted to dezod sell's those.

I have 3inch g-force race harnesses come with a very specific manual on how to mount the harnesses. And in the 7thgen civic's there is really no way to mount the shoulder harnesses safely with out a harness bar.

The mounts in the back seat up by the headrest are designed for baby seats and can not hold/support the weight of a regular adult if anything happens. The lower seat belt mounts on back seat put too much of a low angle on the belts and the driver so if you hit anything your spine is crushed. if you try to run loike an auto cross were you don't have to worry about hitting anything and your just using them to hold you in, it can be good but your back will be killing by the end of the day.

most race cars put the belts in so that they are about parallel to the flat top of your shoulder + about 5 degrees angled upward above the shoulder (I hope you can understand what angle I'm talking about). Basically if you sat in your driver seat and imagined that there was a harness bar directly behind your shoulders about 6 inches and then up about 3-4 inches that is about were you want to mount your harnesses.

 
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G-force is the most conservative with their angle at -5 degrees. I am really not quite sure why this is though. General consensus seems to be that you will not encounter back injury until you go beyond -45 degrees. I would have to think that you could get above -45 degrees from the bottom mounts, is this not correct??

I did not even realize there is a higher mounting point, like I said I have not looked into this much and my car out in the detached garage covered and I have not looked at it in a couple of weeks LOL. What makes this mounting point weaker, is it different thickness/support?

 
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If I remember correctly the upper mounting point is just mounted in the sheet metal and was only designed for baby seats it was never meant to hold the weight of an adult.

I have used my harness before mounted to the bottom seat belt brackets, and I will tell you after about a day of driving my back is usually killing me, mind you I am not a really tall guy I'm only like 5' 7" so I tend to sit below the top of the seat so it is not like I have the belts directly on the tops of my shoulder.

Also another problem that should be addressed is belt stretch. Race harnesses are designed to stretch a certain amount in case of an accident it doesn't matter how tight you make them if they are mounted right behind your shoulders to a cage and you hit the wall at the track you can expect the belts to stretch any were from 8- to 12 inches possibly more. If you run them all the way to the back mounts you have about an extra 4 feet of belt which as some of my friends (that professionally build race corvettes) would say = a lot of stretch. There is a possibility with the g-force of a crash you could end up all the way in the steering wheel possibly the dash but that is a worst case scenario.

On a side note I absolutely love race harnesses if I had it setup properly I would use them everyday (saving up for a proper cage). they hold you in so tight; it does take a little getting used, to most people aren't used being held into the seat like that. but it is definitely worth it IMO.

 
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What if your shorter?

 
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It probably won't hurt your back and you can probably get away with it but your using the top of the seat to basically hold the harness wich probably won't hurt anything but the seat was not designed for that.

 
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I installed my harness just tonight, with the stock seats and no harness bar. For now it seems like the angle should be good, but I will install a harness bar along with seats for next season. If anything else the harness bar is going to be a good spot to mount a camera