Products For The Local Racer

It has been more than a decade since John Deagan discovered what a life-threatening injury feels like from inside a crash helmet.

"I broke my neck in a motorcycle accident," he explains. "The accident was bad, but pulling the helmet off just made it worse.

So Deagan decided to do something about it.

His piece of self-described "tabletop technology" was among the homegrown inventions racers brought to the 2006 Performance Racing Industry Trade Show in Orlando. They were tucked into tiny booths, sandwiched between expensive nd consumer-honed displays of pistons, wheels, racing wear, and machinery.

The homegrown products show that smart minds with good ideas don't always need to rely on focus groups, market researchers, and a cadre of engineers to make an impact on racing. Sometimes it can be accomplished by simply recognizing a problem and then taking a common-sense approach to solving it.

The products-we picked five-are designed to be economical and make the sport less dangerous. You could buy them all for about the price of a set of wheels and tires. Some of the stories behind them are as interesting as the invention itself.

Deagan says he spent a few years mulling ideas about how to remove a race helmet without further injuring a driver or rider.

"I knew firsthand that just undoing the chinstrap and tugging it off was a bad idea," he says. "I talked to rescue workers at a variety of different tracks, and they all agreed with me."

It wasn't until Deagan was at a motocross track and saw a young rider take a hard fall-one that left him with a severe head injury-that he got serious.

His invention consists of a thin plastic bag that is folded into a square, measuring about 2 inches, and mounted between the helmet liner and helmet shell. A thin rubber tube extends from the folded bag to the base of the helmet, where it is attached. The tube is not much larger than most helmet microphone cords.

Helmets with the system are marked with a decal, so medics recognize right away that they can use the airbag.

When a driver is injured, medics need only unhook the chinstrap and squeeze a rubber air pump to inflate the bag. The pressure lifts the helmet away from the head without the medics having to struggle to lift it off the victim.

"It puts no pressure on the neck," he says.

While each driver has to have a helmet bag, a track's rescue crew needs only one hand pump. The helmet bag costs $45, and the pump-there needs to be only one on each rescue rig-is $25.

Deagan's invention has been endorsed by the Snell Foundation and is required in helmets worn by drivers in the Indy Racing League. He supplies the bags to Bell, which installs them in the helmets before they are shipped to IRL drivers.

Beginning this season, the bags will be required in helmets worn by riders in the American Motorcycle Association's motocross and supercross series.

"We've tried to talk to NASCAR," he says, "but I never seem to be able to get to the right person."

Mike Tobias says there is a reason few people in racing use the term "firewall" anymore.

"Most everyone calls it a bulkhead because they know it won't stop a fire," he says.

Tobias makes his living as a cable installer, working mostly in industrial buildings where fire inspectors have an almost-religious fervor about sealing each room from the next to prevent fire from traveling through walls.

"Then my son began racing. When he hit the wall with his Modified, there was a huge fire," Tobias says. "I got to thinking about how bad a job most people do on race cars to prevent fire from getting to the driver."

Flames routinely travel through holes cut in the bulkhead for things such as wires, lines to gauges, the steering shaft, and the transmission shift lever.

To assemble and create a package he says will keep the flames away from drivers, Tobias adapted some of the technology he uses on his day job. He figures both bulkheads on most cars can be sealed for about $250.

Pieces include three sizes of metal split sleeves to surround cables and lines as they pass through firewalls. The void around the wires and lines is then filled with a fireproof expanding foam to seal one side from the other.

"This isn't the foam insulation you buy at Home Depot," he says. "This is material that simply doesn't burn."

Material includes pieces of fireproof foam that can be wrapped around steering shafts and then cut and formed to fit below a shifter boot.

Tobias says he won't sell the package to anyone who hasn't completed his free online training course, which explains how to install the parts and pieces to be sure they work as designed.

"There's no sense doing this unless you do it right," he says.