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Hey all. I am hoping someone can give me a little direction on racing seat options. I am on a budget, but want to be safe. I have been looking online for ideas to use on a first gen RX-7 (1980), but have struck out finding anything recent.
I am 6’2” – 215lbs, so headroom is something I am looking to gain. So, I think a side mount style would be best? I see T3 has some seat brackets, but I am unsure of what seat to go with them. The market for seats is kind of intimidating if you don’t know what you are looking for.
Piggybacking off this, I am also looking to upgrade the seatbelt to something more secure – possibly a 3-point harness (if that even exists). My seatbelts don’t lock when you tug on them. I’m not sure if that is normal or if they are broken. So I don’t have confidence that it would hold me if they were asked to do so.
The budget does not allow for a cage or roll bar. The car is not going to be used on the street. It will be primarily used for autocross and occasionally the drag strip. My budget goal is to stay below $500, if possible. I just need something safe - comfort would be nice, but not a necessity since I'm not taking any long road trips in it.
A three point harness is what you have from the factory, one of those obvious things you don’t realize until some one points it out.
using three point harnesses also isn’t recommended with a bucket seat since it typically puts the lap belt over the soft part of your guts instead of your pelvis. It could do serious harm in an accident.
if you want maximum space while really sticking to a budget, but have a good quality seat, some of the aluminum road race seats like kirkey might be the best shot. You can get fabric covers and supplement them with foam from a fabric store as needed.
definitely hard to get something that fits, looks good, is safe, and comfortable.
buy a genuine name brand seat, Recaro, Sparco, Bride, etc, the chinese knockoffs do not have to go through the crash testing and other certifications, so they are sketchy at best
Aluminum. Kirkey or UltraShield. Bolted directly to the floor. For autocross and drag racing only, you should be good with something like UltraShield Spec Miata seat. If you are road racing, I recommend at a minimum one with shoulder support. Full halo is even better, although the halo only comes into play in a crash. The Kirkey 71 is what is currently in my ITA RX7. Previously I had the equivalent of a "Spec Miata" seat. All those options should come in under $500, except the halo 71, which is about $550. I think a racing buddy might still have a 16 or 17" Kirkey economy road racing seat that came out of his Panoz. If you are interested I could see if he still has it and how much he wants for it. The seat (if he still has it) is in San Diego, but I will be coming up to Thunderhill just before Thanksgiving for a race and could bring it.
Thank you all for the advice. I’ll do some more research on what was shared.
I probably could have explained more about the seatbelt situation. I understand the factory seatbelt is 3-point. What I am looking for is something that holds me better. Because the seatbelt doesn’t lock when tugged (like late model vehicles with ALR), I guess I don’t trust it to hold me if need be.
In my mind I was thinking of something that used the factory mounting points but could be manually cinched down like a racing harness rather than the auto retractor from the factory.
I see there are some devices Available that lock in the lap belt section of the factory seat belt. But it doesn’t look like it would do much for the shoulder belt.
If you're looking for a harness-style restraint system, you're going to need a cross bar for the rear mounts of the harness to ensure proper angle to your back - so in the event of an accident you don't wind up paralyzed due to the straps being mounted to the floor or at too severe of an angle. You can accomplish this with a harness bar or a roll bar behind the seat, which will eat into your budget heavily.
On another point, I'm running Corbeau seats in my car on their double-locking slider brackets. I'm 5'8" and just under 200lb (short and thicc!), and the way that the brackets mount the seats in my car makes it almost impossible for me to fit in the car without a helmet on. No way could I fit with a helmet. Granted, I'm using fixed-back seats which don't allow for reclining whatsoever. I'm planning on either cutting out the floor pan mounts for the seats and modifying the sliders to push the seats down at least an inch, or going with a side-mounting system so that I can angle the seat backwards a bit and fix the seat to the floor. The seats also contact the center console & shifter surround, as well as the e-brake which is super annoying. Either way, the Corbeau system definitely leaves some room for improvement to say the least.
I'd be very careful with "budget" options, especially for road course HPDE style driving. The factory belt and seat and chassis is a complete system. Fixed back seats and full roll cages and 4/5 point harnesses are a complete system. You don't want a harness and a fixed back seat without the roll cage. In a rollover, your body cannot move aside if the roof of the vehicle collapses. In a side impact, your body cannot flop over as the door pushes inward. Both of these scenarios aren't an issue when you run a full cage.
That's not to say you can't upgrade the seat. Just stick with 3 point belt and a seat that reclines...as it will snap backward before snapping your spine and still allow your body to move to the side if necessary.
Harness bars (not full cages) are acceptable for Autocross but should not be used on the street or HPDE road course events. People use them...but that doesn't make them safe. The one that T3 sells is basically a tent pole. I'm not counting on that to save my life.
In the end, a 3 point belt is fine for the g forces a mostly stock 1st gen will see. You'd have to run some pretty hefty brake upgrades to feel like you were getting pulled out of the seat under braking.
I don't like seeing people use a racing harness in a car with out a roll bar. In a roll over the harness will hold you upright in the seat and without the protection of a roll bar you are prime candidate for a neck injury or worse. And in 30+ years of autox I have seen a few cars roll on their tops at autox events.
Aluminum racing seats from Kirkey, Ultrashield, etc. are intended to be mounted to the floor and to have the seat back bolted to a roll bar. Otherwise they are pretty bendy. FIA approved racing composite racing seats don't need to be mounted to a cage. Frankly I always found OE FB seats to be pretty good so not sure I would replace them.
For your belts....
The cheap solution is a CG Lock. It is a clamp that allows you to tighten the lap portion of the factory 3 point seat belt so that it holds you in your seat. I use one in my 2017 Mustang GT when I autox in CAM C. On Federal 595 rs-rr racing tires my car generates 1.09 lateral Gs and the CG Lock keeps me planted in the seat nicely.
The other solution would be to install the lap belt from a racing harness in your car. I did this in the 85 Mustang I also autox. Just unbolt the factory seat belt from the floor, slip the lap belt under the factory belts and bolt every thing back together. On the street, use the factory belts. At the autox/HPDE use both. Find a road racer that has an aged out racing harness, they will probably give them to you.
Then there is the free method. Before latching your factory seat belt, twist it 5-6 times and then connect it. It won't retract anymore and will hold you in pretty good. I do this when I am instructing someone in an autox from the passenger seat. Works pretty damn good and doesn't cost anything. Usually you have to play around with the belt to figure out the optimum number of twists to make it tight.
I don't have any seat knowledge, but just to easy your mind a little the SA seat belts (79-80) do not lock when pulled and they are designed that way. HOWEVER, they do (or at least are supposed to - mine do) lock when the car decelerates quickly. So while they won't catch like new cars do, they will still hold you if there is some hard braking. I know you probably won't use them with whatever you're new setup is, but at least for now it might be some reassurance. And just to note, FB's lock both ways (pulling and decel). You can always swap to an FB belt if you end up staying with relatively 'factory' style seats.
My biggest reason for wanting to change my seat is for headroom. With a helmet on, my head is pretty much touching the roof. I’d be happy to use the stock seat if I can somehow gain a couple of inches by removing the sliding mechanisms and fixing it to a locked position that works.
Benjamin4456, thanks for the reassurance on the factory belt. I’ll consider using them with the CG locks mustanghammer recommended.
I will look some more for seats or ideas and maybe check back with you all for some feedback.
So I think I am going to try the Corbeau Evolution X. It is a fixed back seat making it little less narrower. I think I will give Corbeau's sliding brackets a shot. If sits too high with them, then I will try a Planted brand seat bracket and eliminate the sliders to gain that clearance.
The only reason to pick the Evolution X over the Evolution is if you have a C5/C6 corvette where the Evolution doesn't fit because of the reclining mechanism. Here's the Evolution installed in an AW11 MR2 which is similar size to the RX7. There are no clearance issues in either car for the reclining mechanism.
I’d be okay to give that a try, but Corbeau only seems to sell the reclining Evolution as a pair. I’d like to keep the cost down by buying only one seat. I can’t say I plan on having passengers in the car.
I contacted Corbeau to enquire on purchasing a single LH Evolution seat. Luckily enough, they had one that they could sell me. So I went ahead and purchased it along with their sliding seat bracket. And I think it’s going to work. Shout out to chuyler1 for steering me towards the standard Evolution model, because the reclining feature is nice and probably needed.
I need some feedback on my floor and the seat bracket Corbeau sold me. There are some differences with the angles of the bracket legs and the shape of my floor. The seat bracket legs (mounting tabs) are bent at 90*. The angle of my floor is different. The frame cross rails on the car are at 70*, except for one which is like 80*. So I cannot correctly bolt the bracket to the floor. I was suspecting that Corbeau sent me a miss labeled bracket for another car, but they are insisting that their 20-year old design has been built this way forever at 90*. I see no evidence that the cross rails have been changed or replaced, it all looks OEM. I also think that the seat sits too far to the outside of the car. It really needs to come in about an inch or so.
I will give Corbeau that the seat frame is very close otherwise. If they were bent slightly different the bracket would bolt in as intended.
So my question is know whether Corbuea provided the wrong bracket, or is my car a freak? The latter is a possibility. I’ve learned that some early ’80 and ’79 have some small differences with frame components (I learned this previously). My driver seat also seems to have had the factory sliders changed or swapped around. When I first removed my seat some years ago I learned someone made a mod to relocate the inner slider further out by drilling a new hole in the front cross rail and adding an extension to the back rail.
After playing around with the seat, I think I would prefer to omit the sliders to gain a little more head room and too also move the seat inboard a little. So I am considering getting a bracket from a company called Planted. But before I order, I need to figure out if my car is a freak or not.
Thanks for your input in advance. Your help is much appreciated. Difference in angles between bracket and floor mounts. Seat looking pretty sitting on the floor. The hole drilled in the rail and extension. The seat I pulled out wad anchored at these two locations.
I ended up grinding off the rear tabs of the bracket, then using a spot weld drill to remove the rear stanchions in the car. I used some large bolts and a small stack of washers to mount the bracket through new holes drilled to make it just high enough to slide back all the way. It gives the seat slightly more rake, which for a tall guy like me is perfect. I didn't change the way the rails mount and it slides back all the way to the cubby. I'm 6'3" and I don't even have it all the way back. I just barely fit with my helmet on.
Most other seat brackets are going to mount the same way, if you are worried about head room you gotta cut out those rear stanchions.
to anyone who might see this, I was really inspired by a go-kart seat I drove on an aborad trip as just a nightly outing. I was 14 at the time. I'm nearing 16 now and have a project 83 GSL, and I want a seat that has the retro look that goes with the car, but also that side gripping feeling I got in that kart. I was looking at the classic bucket seat from Corbeau with a 4 point harness from them too. Im using this as my daily, god help me, but do you guys think this is a good option? (I'm putting in a cage as well, I know what happens when you bolt a harness to the floor)
Yolo7- I'm very interested as I'm 6'2", I've had those Planted seat brackets in my ebay cart for over 6 months, and I like the Corbeau seats,. So you ground the rear mounting points out of the car, cut the rear tabs off the corbeau bracket and did what? Drilled and bolted the rear through the 35yo sheetmetal floor? Ouch, I don't think I can do that. Every change I've made to the car could be reversed by a kid with his dad's hand tools. I can't bring myself to start drilling holes in the body. But I want to see how it works out for you and if you can comfortably drive with a helmet. In the stock seat my hair brushes the roof, so I can't go AutoXing until I get a different seat.
Yolo7, I have the same corbeau seat frames and they look exactly the same as yours. I had to modify them to fit properly. Can’t remember exactly what I did, it was a few years ago. I just remember being not so happy about spending so much on them and they didn’t fit properly. There weren’t any other options I could find at the time though..
So to clarify my question and what I have done: 1. I haven't cut anything out of my floor for the seats. I am 99.99% sure its the way it left the factory. 2. The Corbeau seat bracket does not match the shape of my floor. 3. Does everyone else's floor mounts look similar to mine? About 20* off of straight up and down?
I've reached out to Planted. The rep is telling me the photos on their webpage are the actual part. And it clearly shows the mounting tabs are angled and not straight up and down. So I will go out on a limb and pony up another $140 and see what I get. Planted says their brackets will work directly with Corbeau's sliders. Not sure if I want to use them, but its an option.
I'll be sure to report back and try and be detailed about what I am doing knowing there is at least one other person I'd be helping.
Have you at least put the seat/bracket in and sat in it, without bolting it down? The planted bracket isn't going to solve the headroom issues. you won't get the seat mounted far back without the sliders. First, it is near impossible and certainly frustrating to bolt it down, and second, you need the sliders to move the base of the seat behind the bracket for the proper leg room.
headroom sucks for anyone with a long torso. I have my seat on the floor pan and it still isn't low enough. I basically ground off the spot welds to remove the pedestals and bolted through the floor
10-15-19, 10:24 PM
