Racing Seat Install

sandy

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CAT Member
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292
New stuff going on with the Tiger, removed stock seats, added some Vintage Cobra (Not the car but the seat company) seats. I had to make up some rails and do a little learning by mistakes, here are a few pics and the links from the project.

Pictures are out of order. Did a couple of things some might have been excessive, but here goes. All the step by step is also on my web site at -

http://gtsparkplugs.com/sunbeam-tiger-seat-install.html

The initial seats rails were very close to the Tiger seat rails, but not quite. So some bracketing had to be made up.

I used 1.5" x 3/16" thick aluminum angle for all the work.

I added 2 additional seat hold downs as the small bolts didn't instill a sense of safety. One set are fastened with rivnuts the other drill through to the bottom of the car.

The chassis seat rails are not a flat mounting surface, the fronts of all the rails have a slight angle down, look at the fabricated brackets for how much.

I made the seats fixed in location, but some adjustability can be had if you drill the mounting holes symmetrically so the seat can move fore and aft.

The one thing to watch out for is the seats in the Tiger are NOT centered on the rails. They seem to be offset towards the transmission tunnel. So after finding this out I did some work to make the brackets move the seats towards the center of the car.

Again some pics are here, step by step instructions on what I did are on the link above.

One tip is mock things up a lot before cutting and drilling.

Happy Motoring!
 

michael-king

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4,132
I've run the cobra classic buckets in my sii alpine for 19 years, they are a good value seat, however the base cushion squab crushe s down after a little while and then slides forward a little at the rear and part of the seat frame can be felt a little at the base of your back.

Also it's worth putting eyelets it the side bolsters as they are deep and belts have to go around the bucket and chaff the material... also means the lap part isn't as secure across your body as you would want.
 

sandy

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292
I was thinking about the eyelets for the regular belts as well but figured I would see how they fell. They are on the edge of needing eyelets but might not.

The eyelet/grommet for the sub belts were expensive, about 20 bucks each and were hard to find, but really just need to be in the car and see how snug they feel.

Again thanks for your help!!

Sandy
 

mwood

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Messages
175
This thread has inspired me to cut holes in the sides of my Classics to install grommets for the Simpson belts. Corbeau sells them, about $50/shipped for four.

I like the Classics, but I think they're just a little wide for the application. If I was going to do it again, I might look into some of the AC Cobra replica seats that have additional side bolstering...or just have some seats made to fit and get exactly what I want.

Sandy, I'm glad you figured out the offset. :)
 
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