Mounting Race Seats
 

I am going to be mounting a race seat in my car. I am having a hard time deciding on if I should buy brackets or making my own. I am planning on running sliders as well. I have looked for other threads and couldn't find what I am looking for. I also thought beeing a race prep item there should be a specific thread in this section.

I have found brackets from Sparco and Goodwin racing. Are there any others?
Also If you have made your own Could you please post pictures of them.

This will be my dd/track car so I will still be using the factory seats. I noticed that the Sparco may have brackets to mount the factory seat belt receiver. Anyone use one?

Have a great day,
Jared

I have a braket made for side mounted Sparco's. They were included with a Sparco seat that a friend sold me and was made by Piper.

It's basicaly Sparco Sliders with tabs welded in the front, tabs to the rear (remove the stock humps and drill into floor and tabs for the seats. So everything is welded to the sliders with two cross bars welded under the seat to the sliders also. Seems simple I'm sure they charged like 400 dollars to do it though.

It's pretty time consuming to fab your own brackets but. If you have the extra money I would just buy them if you dont... rainy day project

EDIT: I should be it can be time consuming depending on how tight the seats are.

I made my own for the bottom mount of the Sparco Sprint V. I bolted the seat belt receiver to the tranny tunnel with backing plates.

This is what I was thinking about doing. I would love to see some pictures of your brackets. Was even thinking about just leaving them in the car and selling the seats. I would have to get some NA belt receivers if I do that.

Have a great day,
Jared

You want 1.6 receivers if you go that route as they bolt to the tunnel.

1.8 Miatas' receivers bolt to the stock seats.

This is the bracket I was thinking about getting.

Mazda Performance Parts: Custom Miata Seat Rail for RACE SEATS.

They only offer one for the drivers side and I am going to be installing a seat on the p-side as well since I instruct and want my passenger to have the same safty equipment as well. How much different is the p-side mounting then the d-side?

This one is made for the NA, but I don't think the NB is much different but for the mounting of the belt receiver.

OG Racing - SPARCO SEAT ADAPTER BASE - MAZDA - Sparco seat adapter bases are designed to allow...

Any thoughts os subestions would be help full. If you made your brackets are they simplar to the first one. Pictures would be great.

Have a great day,
Jared

I made brackets to mount my Ultrashield seats on the factory rails.
Pics are posted on my cardomain page: http://www.cardomain.com/ride/810280/23

The older NAs also had place to bolt it to the tranny tunnel. The NBs do not have this.

I'll get pics of mine, but I copied a guy's idea from cardomain. I'll take a look for the page. I used to 1.5" strips of 3/16" steel bolted to the stock holes, and the seat bolts to the strips. I used grade 8 zinc plated bolts to fasten everything, and used a 9/16" bolt for the seat belt receiver with 1/2"x4"x4" steel backing plate.


EDIT:
I copied this guy's, but I didn't use 4 pieces of metal. I was able to bolt just the two to the floor and the seats to them. I also contoured the brackets to drop below the OEM seat humps and follow the floor. I lowered the steering wheel with a 1/4" spacer as well.

Here is the link
http://www.cardomain.com/ride/158355/4

http://memimage.cardomain.com/ride_i...0010_large.jpg

Perhaps the single biggest safety factor in a crash is staying tightly bound in a seat that is well anchored to the chassis.

Two factors are of great concern: The seat and mounts need to be worthy of about 30 G's. 2nd, the harness and belts need to anchored both equally well and at the proper angles.

Loads measured in Indy car and F1 crashes have often exceeded 100 G's with the driver walking (stumbling) away. That does not include overweight drivers.

The last thing you want to do is die in a light weight crash. If you gotta go, make it a good one.

Corky
crashworthy design engineer in a previous life, but still very close to my heart.

I just modified my factory sliders to the sparcos, it worked great but i feel the seats sit to high :(

This is somethimg that I am afraid of and the main reason that I am looking at other mounting options. In my spec I had momo starts in the car on the factory sliders and they felt too high. I want to be lower in this car.

I may just buy the goodwin bracket and slider for my the drivers seat and then fab something up for the passenger in hopes that a better mount will come out.

Ever since I rolled my 2000 the safty issue has been the first thing on my list.

Thank you all for sharing your custom mounting brackets and ideas. As corky stated there is an insane amount of force generated in an accident. So much so that it's hard to imagine. I can handle killing my self but I can't handle liveing knowing that I killed someone else due to my lack of prepairedness.

Have a great day,
Jared

I've been a little lazy but I need to mount my seat. I think its going to be bolted to the floor. Like this: …and now I fit! johnkimballracing.com
Edit: and my buddy is helping me weld up a harness bar (3" exhaust tambien) to go where the seat belt tower was.

Same seat and everything. The back gets bolted straight through the floorboard!
http://www.johnkimballracing.com/wor...m-IMG_0168.jpg

I do not know if you have your seats already but the Momo Start can be bolted to the factory rails (at least in an NB) with mild modification. They end up at about the same seat height as the stock seat, maybe a tad lower. This is what I did for my DD.

For the track car I have a Kirkey installed on a modified stock rail right now. It is too tall however so I am going to mount it to the floor using something very similar to what Turotufas and dgmoor shows above.

Worked on my '93 too. It is indeed not much lower than stock. Sure feels like it though. I'm not terribly confident in those fiberglass'ed nuts in the seat. Couldn't for the life of me see them, so I hope I didn't cross thread them, and I sure as hell don't trust them for 30g's.

Now that you bring it up, I suddenly feel like re-thinking it all. I really don't see how mine is any worse than the oem stuff (and i know you probably weren't referring to mine). I'm always open to other ways or input to mount mine.

Tex- I have not bought my seats yet, but have decided on the sprints. I will not be mounting them to any factory sliders since they dont just bolt up and they will sit too high in the car.

I want to get lower than the roll bar. My cage in my spec was much closer to the hard top so much so that it had to be trimmed in the rear above the window to fit on the car. I felt much more safe in that car than I do in my new one.

Have a great day,
Jared

Jared, the bracket from Goodwin racing looks exactly like what my Spec builder fabbed for me for the drivers (although, he charged me $150 including the installation).
The biggest issue is getting low enough. I kept my humps, but, only because I'm 5'6", and can nicely fit under the rollcage.

Here is what I came up with. I wanted the seat as low as possible so I did not use a slider. I also cut out the rear humps and bolted thru the floor with backing plates, I left the front humps in place. Cheers!
Attachment 199059
Attachment 199060

Looks good! You gonna reinforce it though?

Hopefully seat is not going to come off or bend with a hard cornering :)
Looks pretty good though.

I would not worry about the hard cornering as much as an accident. I was thinking about doing something like that but decided against that. I want to sit as low as I can as well but not at the risk of my safety. Its a trade off.

+1 on reinforcing it.

Have a great day,
Jared

Mine is pretty much the same as that. How would you go about making it safer? I used 3/8" steel bolted to the stock boss.

I think the lateral support is what it needs to prevent it from twisting during a high lateral G load hit. The belts a designed to keep the ocupant in the seat not the seat and ocupant in the car.

Have a great day,
Jared

Just bars connecting the seat bolts or triangulate it?

Like the first 2 pictures on page 1.

Ah, so just back and forth. Short term memory, forgot about those pictures already

Any idea if the cross pieces have to pass through the seat bolt, or can it be bolted to the longitudinal bars?

Look at either of the two links that I posted. That should give you a great idea of how to go.

Have a great day,
Jared

Thanks, I missed that!

+1 on reinforcing it.

Thanks for the input guys. I always thought it was strong enough, the seat does not budge when you pull hard on it from the top in any direction but you guys have convinced me to honestly reevaluate the strength of this mount. What I think I'm going to do is weld in an X brace so its a box with an X, that should take care of any twisting or lateral flex.

Attachment 199042

If you're bolting to the factory humps, that will be strong enough. Otherwise, reinforce below the floor.
Some rails would work very nicely.

Reinforcing on top of the floor will do absolutely squat to prevent the seat ripping itself out of the thin sheet metal that is Miata's floor.

This is what make me think you need to reinforce those seat brackets. I don't know about you but I am willing to add a little wieght down low so that I may have a better chance of comming out alive and relatively unharmed.

If you want to throw out someones experiance then please go right ahead and do so at your own risk. Just don't come crying if you get hurt. I honestly would rather have a full weld in cage but I can't rationalize it on a DD. This is not the place to be cheap. There are plenty of other places you can do that.

Have a great day,
Jared

holy s#$% thats my car lol, well at least with its previous owner. I was thinking about getting in touch with him about mounting that same model seat back in

Are you talking to me? If so I'm pretty sure I just said I am taking the advise of a few on here and I am going to reinforce my seat mount.

The front humps are still in place, for the rear I have 4" x 4" backing plates and large washers. Nothing will be pulling thru the floor. What exactly do you mean by “some rails would work very nicely”? Are you referring to sliders?

My last post was not intended towards you it was just a general statement. No that I have reread it it reads like it was intended towards you. Sorry.

Have a great day,
Jared

No worries, its cool.

Sorry. I tend to swallow my vowels when I speak, and words when I write.
I meant to say "steel rails", or "pieces of flat iron". But, seems like you've done what's necessary.

I've seen some seats bolted with only large washers securing the seat to the floor, and, personally, it feels iffy.

Safety is not something to skimp on. Having been in a rather nasty off on a bike (while wearing full gear, and still having suffered a concussion), I am not looking forward to regretting not spending enough on safety, and always try to fully address it.

Finally bought some flat steel. I'll be posting a picture of my results soon.

The seat will be fine bolted in with washers on each side. Its the harness that counts.

so I might be picking up a momo supercup soon and want to get it as low as possible since my head is in the dangerzone with the rollbar right now. I was thinking about going the route that was shown in the previous pictures but does it change anything that my seat will be fiberglass rather than tube like I believe the previously shown seats were? also, Im pretty sure there are existing side holes in the seat ill be buying (used) so anyone got any cheap but SAFE suggestions for mounting side mount style? I wouldn't want to do something wrong and have the fiberglass end up tearing off the bolts or something in an accident.

Thanks!

Something like this will work nicely (they CAN be found cheaper), and SAFE

i have seen those but didnt consider that a DIY solution. im not sure how else to safely side mount it tho. If i were to just get some thick angle iron, could I bolt that to effectively what everyone else constructed? do they make angle iron wide enough for that? I guess my main concern was the actual method of mounting the seat to whatever bracket I make. will a threaded fiberglass hole really be sufficient? Im not actually picking up the seat for a few days, maybe it will all be clear once i have it..

Steel Stock, drilled and bolted directly to seat frame using Class 8 hardware while utilizing stock mounting location.

Attachment 193201
Attachment 193202

that looks pretty good. wanna make me one of those? haha

Get a drill, a vise, and a cutting wheel. You can then make your own.

Supplies should be around a hundred dollars at your local hardware store.

Ahead of Purchase?
 

Hi folks,

Great forum, first post...

I'm buying a '97 this week and am considering seat option right away. (I'll be aiming for a street-legal example with a very heavy focus on HPDE and perhaps WERC events. Probably V8 swap on the horizon.) Since I've not seen what the floor and bottom of the NA looks like yet, perhaps this is not an option.

Having a nut and bolt protruding under the car for a seat mount doesn't sound like a great idea to me. There are too many things that can mess them up...especially over time. Why not make a plate, or full-length bar, with:

1. a captive nut and beveled edges, or
2. welded studs that protrude up from the bottom, rather than down from the top?

If done that way, you could possibly have more options for location and bracket design. Also, you could gain fractional headroom (rail thickness) and incremental CG benefits. ;) The plates or bars could be welded to the floor (bottom-side).

Go for it. We're using existing plates that have nuts welded onto them that came from the factory. Don't over complicate this.

I've drilled a hole for my 5th and 6th points, and they're easily an inch above the bottom of the frame rail.

I've been able to fit a Sparco Rev Plus competition seat to the OEM rails by drilling the bottom of the seat ala Sparco ol' style, using bolts thru a wide washers instead the 80's Sparco threaded inserts.
the seat is slightly positioned inboard for door clearance.
The position of the seat is lower, which is great to have a proper helmet to roof distance.
So long.
Ben.

Oh, that sounds good enough. I'll see the bottom of the car this weekend...

The harness holds you into the seat. If the seat comes loose the harness no longer has anything to hold you against. I've seen several instances in larger sedan type cars where the seat mount breaks in a crash and the occupants become loose flying objects in the cabin.

The seat mounting needs to be reasonably robust. But I suspect you are right that bolts with washers on each side through the shell would be enough.

Bob

Just ordered my Corbeau FX1 Pro... should have it by Friday

Run 2 - 1/4"x1.5 steel plates and enjoy your new seat.

If you rip 1/4x1.5 steel you WILL have bigger issues than your seat ripping off.

im about to order this:

http://group5.rpmware.com/store/prod...?itemid=164682

am i to assume if its for momo it will fit? or do the distances between mounting holes vary by seat model? it claims it is for 406 mm bases, i tried searching the bolt distance but had no luck

i have a momo supercup for the record, but its at my parents house so I dont have access to measure the holes. i wanna order the mounts to be delivered at their house for next time i visit I can get it installed.

thanks for any clarification

That wont fit the stock miata mounts, you will have to add an extra piece or cut the stock mounts since the miata floor isnt straight.

i gots a corbeau rail up for grabs! ;)

so bolting it straight to the floor is not an option? I didnt mind drilling new holes, but your saying I should just bolt my side mounts to something like what the first few pics were? also, will this fit the threaded holes in the side of the seat? that was my main concern.

Thanks

I ordered the rail at the same time. I saw yours for sale but in the end it would have proably cost the same or more...

:)

it was OBO ;)