So I ordered a seat. No more Lotus seats for me. It is time to focus the driver's seat on me and go back to OEM passenger seat for comfort of the wife for the 1 ride a year she may take with me.
After going back and forth between FIA cert and non-FIA , cheap or expensive, real or replicas, name brand or not.....I decided on a Buddy Club P1 "Limited Edition" seat. Picked it up from KSeriesparts.com for $503 free shipping. Seemed like a good deal to me. Its not FIA cert but will be good for any autocrosses and for the occasional drive I take in the car. It has what I feel is a reputable name behind it and wasn't too expensive. Got here in 3 days. Very happy with my purchase.
Seat is comfortable. Im 6' about 180lbs, 32" jean size. I'm skinny. Seats fits me perfectly. It is a nice suede/velour material with red stitching that matches my steering wheel, handbrake boot and potentially my shift boot if I reinstall it. It has simple, clean logos and the main logo will be hidden when Im driving. I really wanted to avoid being an obnoxious advertisement for SPARCO or NRG or BRIDE (and wanted to avoid the real or rep argument.)
I have a set of Garage Star seat rails I bought on sale a while ago as they were "blemished". Coulda fooled me; I didn't see any blemishes. Figured install would be somewhat easy.
Well the door bars, roll bar, and hardtop latches all made this install harder than I thought. Had to make sure I could still get to the side hardtop latches, seat had to be far enough back where driving position is comfortable. After a few hours I finally got the seat installed. Added holes to the rails and lengthened some of the slots. And I still need to make adjustments as the seat needs to go further back; but it fits. It is a tight fit in the car because of the door bars and contacts the door bar a little. That may change if the seat goes back another inch or so. Its definitely tough to get the rear bolts in to the chassis. I will be running harnesses and will most likely eliminate the OEM seat belt.
The seat looks awesome in the car. Will feel even better once its positioned a bit further back. Will definitely need a quick release for the wheel to aid getting in and out.
Here are a few pictures.seat1.jpgseat2.jpgseat3.jpgseat4.jpg