Race seats for taller drivers

[Dan]

Why don't you go to a proper race seat and hard mount it in the correct location for you?

Thats the plan, but I've tried a couple of proper race seats in there, a fibreglass shell type as well as a steel frame Corbeau and both foul the shoulder wings on the B-pillar, which looses about 50mm of rearward seat travel.

There may be a decent race seat that suits me, I just haven't found one yet.

How much does it foul by? If it’s not by much could you shave a fibreglass seat down slightly in the wings and then get the stitching fixed?

I spoke to V-Sport about my Racetech seat before I put it into my MX5 as I was concerned it wouldn’t fit (it did, just. Since replaced by a Cobra seat though) and it was their suggestion to me that if it didn’t fit because of the wings to shave them down and get that part of the seat restitched, they also offered that Racetech might even do it for me but I never explored that option.

Would be cool to see you get your own seat approved if you end up doing it though!

[beavis]

PM Lightyear. He's a tall guy too. I know he has made himself at least one fibreglass/carbon seat to give himself more room. He may be able to assist?

Problem with that is the seat never went beyond a concept made of foam. And it relies on the strucutre around it as support like the seat foam insert of an F1 car. However the support behind your back in an mx5 only goes half way up your back. A sudden hit from behind and the seat could snap in half. Along with your back.

[StillIC]

This thread has given me that extra bit of incentive I needed to start my tall person seat project. I have a basic design worked out and outside/major dimensions completed. Next step is to draw it up fully dimensioned. Thanks crazyracer.

[CrazyRacer]

How much does it foul by? If it’s not by much could you shave a fibreglass seat down slightly in the wings and then get the stitching fixed?

Hacking into a brand new, expensive race seat would make me cry, and I suspect void any FIA certification it might have.

But if I could find and cheap second hand one to experiment on...sure

This thread has given me that extra bit of incentive I needed to start my tall person seat project. I have a basic design worked out and outside/major dimensions completed. Next step is to draw it up fully dimensioned. Thanks crazyracer.

Let us know how you get on, maybe start a thread on the progress I'd be keen to see what you come up with.

[Dan]

How much does it foul by? If it’s not by much could you shave a fibreglass seat down slightly in the wings and then get the stitching fixed?

Hacking into a brand new, expensive race seat would make me cry, and I suspect void any FIA certification it might have.

But if I could find and cheap second hand one to experiment on...sure

Yeh I think it would void the certification (not sure many scrutineers would notice or care) but since you are talking about getting a custom seat made without any FIA certification you’d end up in the same boat with similar width wings but at least the core of the FIA seat has been tested.

If you avoided using an orbital and hand sanded I don’t think the risk would be too high of messing anything up shaving the wings and in terms of price you can grab a second hand fibreglass seat with FIA 8855-1999 certification for under $500 if you can wait for one to come up (I got my two Cobra seats from seperate sellers for less than that and both were lightly used).

[Okibi]

This is another option for tall drivers

http://www.mazda-speed.com/forum2/index.php/topic,31972.0.html

[StillIC]

This is another option for tall drivers

http://www.mazda-speed.com/forum2/index.php/topic,31972.0.html

I would love to see modifier installing the rear mounting bolts on this, now that the seat is in the way! And if it was set up for me, those mounting points would be well forward...up near the middle of the seat. Impossible!

Edit: The rear mounts holes are actually open ended slots, so I now see the bolts would go first, and the seat slid in. It would then be tricky but possible to get an open ended spanner on to bolt heads, with the seat back in the forward position, to tighten them. But for my comfortable position there would be no access to those bolt heads.

[greenMachine]

This is another option for tall drivers

http://www.mazda-speed.com/forum2/index.php/topic,31972.0.html

Interesting.

I note that he has deleted the front pin. I am not sure that it has much of a role in locating the seat when the mounts are stressed (ie in an accicident) but with the replacement of a bolt hole with a slot at the rear, I would like to see it reinstated. I doubt that the rear bolts are likely to be torqued to the specs, due to the limited access, and in any decent accident the front bolts are going to be asked to do more of the work of securing the seat.

Better to extend the fitting back further and bolt it through the floor using a plate like you do when installing a harness, then you can get a rattle gun on it and torque it up properly.

[Tony]

It's always going to be difficult (if not impossible) to tighten the rear mounting bolts when using a bottom mount bracket, such as that in the link above. I do note however that this example is using the OEM seat with standard Mazda bottom mount location.

Only last week I installed a PCI side mount bracket on my Sparco race seat and following a tip posted on here (or perhaps somewhere else, I can't remember now) tightening the rear floor bolts was easy. In case you haven't seen it, this is the process I used.

Before mounting in the car, I bolted the seat to the PCI mounting bracket using the front two side mount bolts only. I also semi-fitted up the sub belt before attaching the seat to the bracket. (My belts are attached using snap on fittings and eye bolts).

I then placed the seat with bracket attached into the car and installed the front bolts mounting the PCI bracket to the floor. I then tipped the seat forward, pivoting on the front side mount bolts, giving me plenty of room to install and tighten the rear bracket mounting bolts to the floor.

The only difficult part of the install was then getting the rear side mount bolts started - especially the one next to the transmission tunnel. I used the waist belt hole in the side of the race seat to get slightly easier access. Once the thread has started it was a fairly straight-forward job to tighten up.

Overall the job wasn't as difficult as I had imagined. I hope that helps someone in the future...

[The American]

Drop the floor pan.

Are you going to share? :-)

[greenMachine]

That's a great tip Tony -

[Okibi]

Also a stubby or swivel head ratchet spanner is very handy.