FIA restraint certification

[dcareri]

My current harness is FIA certified with an "expires after 2012" date tag. Are these belts legal for my upcoming 2012 annual inspection?  Or do the belts have to be valid for the entire inspection period, which would be March 2012-March 2013?  It's not clear from the GCR which is right.

Thanks
Denny Careri
AS 16

[Miata88]

Your belts expire December 31, 2012
after that they are out of date and not legal.

[Magical Trevor]

Indeed, sometimes getting all the details surrounding timeframe can be a little hazy when it comes to tech (i.e., 365-Day Car Annual Inspections vs. Calendar-Year Personal Safety Equipment Inspections).

While the belts are checked for your 365-day car inspection, they may well expire beforehand. That expiratin date will be noted by the tech inspector alongside the annual inspection stamp on the entry in your car's logbook. An inspector at each event will check through each entry in the logbook from your most recent Annual Inspection to the current event's new entry. So, if you wanted to enter an event January 1 2013, the event inspector would flip through the logbook to discover that your Annual will still be valid but you will have had to install new belts with a later expiration date. The same process applies for "fix-by-next-event" notes made after a crash or for non-safety-related items.

[dcareri]

Thanks for the clear explanation!

Denny