Retro Style seats anyone?

[jnshk]

Copypasta of my experiment from last year:

OK. Seats are in. Pics first, then my thoughts/notes...




Gap between seat and rear bulkhead



Fully forward



Fully forward gap between seat and rear bulkhead



Seatbelt mounting point



Tight fit between transmission tunnel and door cards. Doesn't touch either while in rearward position, but very close to it. Rubs a little against transmission tunnel when pushed to forward position.



FITMENT NOTES:

1. Cannot be used with OEM armrest-style door handles. (Suggest using looped strap-type door pulls.)

2. REQUIRES USE OF 90-93 SEAT BELT RECEIVERS (or full racing harness).
2a. Receivers must be removed from plastic sheath so that the strap can be run through grommet.
2b. Seatbelt grommets necessarily need to be installed in seat.
2c. Driver Side Receiver P/N: NA01-57-680B-00 -- Passenger Side Receiver P/N: NA01-57-620B-00

3. Included sliders must be modified:
3a. New hole drilled in bottom rail of slider ~260mm from rear-most hole. You might be able to scoot this hole further forward (which would be better, generally speaking) on the brackets/rails, depending on what fasteners/hardware you use.
3b. Front edge of bottom rail must be beveled/angled with a relief so that front mounting bolts to attach brackets to car can be positioned. This needs to be done for both rails on driver side, and for outboard rail on passenger side.
3c. Release levers may need to be *modified* so as to clear the bottom of the seat. *They need to be bent/angled down in front of the pivot point, so that the release handle can clear the seat bottom and be pulled upward enough to release the locks.

4. Rearward seat travel is limited by the "seat belt towers" (and in my car by the roll bar).

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My impressions?

They look amazing. They are very comfortable to sit in. But once they are in the car, I start to feel a little bit more cramped than I like to be. These are definitely not seats for tall drivers and passengers. Seating position is about the same (maybe slightly lower?) from stock height, but significantly further forward. If there were a way to get the seats further back, it would be a tremendous improvement.

Also, because of the width of the seats, they are centered in the floor pan between the transmission and the doors, which means that they are not centered to the steering wheel. Pedals feel nicely positioned but steering wheel is slightly to the right.

I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do with these seats, but I have a feeling that they will ultimately come back out of the Miata (and very possibly go into the '58 Volvo). I do like them a lot, but in a tiny car like this I really need as much space as I can get!

...

Prices on the website are per seat. So yeah, this has been a very spendy experiment for me. (Thankfully, the seats will fit nicely in the Volvo if/when I pull them out of the Miata.)

The last pic is a little bit deceiving because of the angle it was taken at. The wheel is off-center, but perhaps not as much as it looks in the photo. Surprisingly the steering wheel didn't bother me as much as I thought it would, and actually my feet felt better centered on the pedals. However, being so close to the door and so far forward were a BIG change from the Elise seat that was bolted directly to the floor, and those do tend to bother me.

...

they look good.
how's spirited driving in them?

Not great (which is another reason they will likely go into the Volvo). I think that if you sunk down into them a bit more it wouldn't be so bad, but I find that I'm more sitting ON them than IN them, so I tend to roll, pitch, and yaw with the car during spirited maneuvers.

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New comments (2014.06.19):

- If not for the seatbelt towers, and with the flat-bottom modification to the floor pan, these could be a great fit. I'm sure that someone creative and talented could come up with a good solution to make it happen, but it's more modification than I was willing to do at the time. I think that some minor adjustments could improve how well the seat holds you too, but with the other compromises that are already mentioned, it's not something I'm willing to attempt any time soon.

- I sent my prototype brackets to Stefan @ GTS Classics, as well as some production notes for alterations that I felt would improve them, but I never did hear back from him again, so I have no clue whether he has actually pursued that to make an easy-installation option for Miatas.