NC2 Removable Racing Seat & Harness for Sprints?

[Jitag]

I'm looking to fit a removable racing seat and a five or six point harness to an NC2 that currently has the 'Sports Pack" Recaro seats. I use the car as my daily drive, and want to be able to remove the normal seat and install the racing seat for Sprint days 4 or 5 times each year, then reverse the process the day after the event each time. I'm just under 178 cm (6 ft) and weigh around 85 kg, and I know that I can't fit into some small seats. I also want to make minimal changes to the car to install either the seat or the harness, and don't want to spend a fortune. I'm looking for suggestions and approximate costs for purchase and installation, etc. Suggestions from NC owners who do sprints would be most welcome, as the NCs always seem to have different fittings, etc, to all other MX-5s. I am in Melbourne, and can take the car basically anywhere in the Metro area, but north or east would be preferable. Thanks in anticipation.

[JBT]

Use the standard Recaros and forget about an after market seat.

[Trackphotos]

Or, do as you planned rather than do what suits somebody who isn't you and isn't driving your car, doesn't know how you drive it or what you might gain from it...

There are floormount adapters for NCs so you can mount a bucket seat to them, mostly coming out of the states though from what I've seen so it's possible they won't be suitable for RHD cars. Not sure if there's any way to modify a pair of original rails to fit any particular bucket seats like you can do for NA and NB. At your height and weight, you'd most likely fit comfortably inside a Sparco Sprint V, or a Bride Lowmax. If you can find an adapter you can throw it in for the track days, and swap the oem seat and rails back in after the day is done.

[davekmoore]

..... although if you're looking for something light, the Sparco ain't it.

[Nevyn72]

Does the NC2 have a seat mounted air-bag?

This may cause you some issues if swapping seats......

[Trackphotos]

12kg with NB rails fitted, 1kg lighter than NB oem seats. To be expected from steel-frame seats. No idea how heavy the NC Recaros are, wouldn't be a whole lot different though.

Pretty sure those particular Recaro seats do have a side airbag, which would throw a code/warning light when disconnected but won't stop the car from being driveable. Not reasonable for daily use, but for a track day here and there, who cares?

[Dan]

I'm about the same height as you (a tad over 6') and have had two different seats in my car both with a roll bar and without. The seat can be easily removed by just removing the four bolts, disconnecting the seat belt sensor, pulling the seat out, swapping the seat belt clip over and then doing the reverse with the stock one.

I use solid side mounts for the seats and had the floormounts made by Daniel Deckers from Deckspeed, you can find floor mounts online but a local shop should be able to do them for not much more and make them for your car.

The two seats I've had are both fibreglass. The first was a Racetech 4009W which is a wide seat which was a bit too wide for me and a Cobra Suzuka in normal width (I also have a Cobra Imola sitting here which will replace the passenger seat at some point), both fit with no troubles like I'd expect most seats would in an NC (The Racetech one slightly rubbed on the door but it was a wide seat). If you are interested in a seat but worried about the fitment go on the Racetech site and get the width of the seat wings then compare to the seat you are considering, if it's smaller than that it will fit.

In terms of costs the Racetech was expensive but I purchased the Suzuka for $350 second hand and the Imola for $400 second hand so you can find bargains out there if you look.

In terms of the harness you should buy a 6 point one, to mount you'll need eyelets in the floor and for the Shoulders you'll need to have a plate with eyelets installed on the stock roll bar, it's not ideal but it works. The same race shop locally that can make your floormount will be able to do this.

After running with the stock bar for a bit I ended up going with a Brown Davis rollbar which gave me head clearance which made me feel safe using a HANS device with the setup as I was around the top of the stock roll bar with a helmet on and the roll bar gave a ton of extra clearance (you can see the stock bar is around the top of the seat and the roll bar is way above that).

The final thing you'll need to do is either live with the airbag light blinking with the Race Seat in or you will need to put a resistor into the plug here's a thread on the process http://forum.miata.net/vb/showthread.php?t=553241

Hope that helps out, here are a few pics of the setups, one of the photos is of the door clearance on the Racetech seat which is the wider one: