There have been a couple threads discussing the r3 Recaro seats installed in an fd.
I recently went through this install and have a few comments.

The seats do fit well, they do not contact the door cards.
They are pretty comfortable for the average 6 foot, 34 waist body type.

The stock rx8 sliders have to be removed, along with a significant portion of the recaro’s lower frame.
I have seen others do some rather sketchy looking “adapter” plates, but they’d create an artificially tall seating position, and be dramatically unsafe.
I ended up using ronin’s fixed seat mounts connected to reinforced bosses welded to the r3 frames, after cutting away all the stuff in the r3 frames that was in the way.
Since the factory 7 seatbelt receiver is mounted to the factory seat frame/slider, and reinforced to create secondary retention back to another mounting point beside the slider, I added a set of tethers that tie the receivers in back there as well.

I would not do this again, I’d simply purchase some aftermarket seats and slap those on the ronin fixed seat brackets. It was more fabrication work than expected to get a good seat position with durable and safe mounting.

 

They do look really good too. I wonder how common those are to find used and if they are a huge premium or not. If you can get it cheap it may be worth all the fab work.

When you sit in the seats are they about the same sitting height as the stock seats or are they higher/lower?

Nice job!
Dale

 

I bought a set of those last year. Haven't mounted them yet though. I got mine for $1,200. They are a bit hard to find since it's a special edition RX8. I got them from the RX8club forum.

 

They are lower, and further back with the fixed mounts. The seat pan is sitting right on the floor.
If one used sliders, they’d be higher than stock due to the wider seat pan not fitting between the stock sliders. The factory sliders on the r3 seats are also too wide to fit low enough. You could do a hybrid setup, but it wouldn’t be worth the trouble, there’s barely enough room for the fixed mounts as is.
Technically you could sneak sliders in, but it’d go from quite a bit of fabrication to tons of fabrication.
You would basically scrap the entire lower seat structure and build your own.

I believe the gentleman I purchased the car from had paid $450 for this pair of r3’s. He just hadn’t installed them yet.

 

A little modern for my taste, but a sharp looking seat nonetheless.

 

Very nice. I have them in my Cosmo, and I really like them. I've always wondered if they would fit in the FD.

Not the best picture, but it's all I have:

 

they look good though, i would need to have slides for sure and with short legs these seats probably wouldn't work well for me. i always wanted to put these in my RX-8 but never committed.

thank you for posting this info.

 

No problem.

One other note, these seats are heavy as hell in stock form.
I removed almost half their mass while modifying them to fit, safely.

 

So basically nobody else should do this. lol

 

There are certainly easier options out there.
That said, these are the best seats for comfort and support I’ve tried personally in an fd.
The oem recaros with the tilting sliders is the only option I’d prefer over these.

 

My set up, I need cut lower section of plastic sections for my seat to fit ~
Overall is not really straightforward, but like threads starter say , the seat is very comfortable and offer great support

 

After picking up a spare drivers seat for the 8, I wouldn’t want to install these in the FD. They’re super heavy. A little bit more than the stock leather seats. Probably has to do with the damn airbag integrated into the seat.
Nope, after witnessing and installing the factory RZ seats into the car, there’s no other seat I would want to put into the FD.
Keep in mind, they’re designed for a certain body type and position. A lot of tall folks around here who are uncomfortable due to the lack of significant padding the seat comes with. Keep in mind, they’re designed with someone of an average weight of about 145-155lbs or so. Japanese people are not big.
This being said, I’m ever so slightly heavier than the average Japanese person, but the seats fit me perfect. Ideal position in the car too.

 

The R3 seats are nice but not that comfortable as well as if you're tracking your car, doesn't give that great of "grip" for the driver. I thought about converting my rx8 interior to the r3 interior until testing out the seats. On top of that, rarity is going to make these seats way over priced, not like the Spirit R/RZ seats but will still be expensive.

 

would love to see the section you modded to fit into the car