How To: Racing seat brackets

Sorry if this post gives anyone deja vu. I originally discussed this bracket design in my thread about my new seats in the Photo forum, but I figured more people who need this info could find it here. Instructions here are as they relate to my Yonaka Samurai racing seats, and may differ slightly for other products.

I spent most of this past Sunday getting getting one seat installed, and hopefully the second will go a bit more smoothly. I used this how-to for reference in making seat mounting brackets, but decided to go a little different direction. Thanks to Shifted for sharing his method. Here's how my attempt went: (The older set of hands in the brown overalls are my father's. I owe him a few beers for helping me muddle through this project.)

Supplies:
- 17" x 48" metal plate. Not sure how thin it could safely be, but 0.25" thick is plenty.
- Sheet of plywood. Amount required depends on how lucky you are.
- Eight 1.5" long bolts. I believe the ones I used were 3/8" diameter. Matching washers and lock nuts. Makes sure you get ones strong enough that you would trust them.
- Eight 1" spacers that will accomodate your bolts. Mine were 1.5" diameter to fully support the seat rail.

Tools:
- Sawzall w/ metal cutting blade
- Some clamps
- Drill, preferably a drill press

Sorry if this list isn't perfectly specific. I was making this up as I went along.

I went to my local steel and metal dealer, and was fortunate to find the had a leftover "cutting" of 0.25-inch aluminum plate, 17" wide by 48" long. This metal set me back about $85. It was exactly wide enough for the brackets, and long enough to make two of them with a bit of leeway. This is what one piece looked like cutting in half:



Of course, the old seat comes out. Stud locations and the vent are revealed.


Use a piece of plywood to cut a rough template. A hole is cut in the middle to allow the vent, and the inside edge is trimmed to hug the console. Once a decent fit is achieved, rap the wood over each stud with a mallet to mark the stud locations. Drill these holes, and set the template in place over the studs. Put the seat on top, and be sure that it will allow you to mount your seat where you want. I wanted some extra legroom, so mine has a bit of extra overhang at the back.



Trace the wooden template onto the metal plate with a marker, and cut out the edges with a sawzall.



Clamp the wood template and metal bracket together.



Using the holes in the template as guides, drill the mounting holes in the bracket.



Check fitment.



At this point, I placed the seat on the bracket and decided on it's final location. I marked the location of the seat sliders and their mounting holes. Back to the drill press one more time to make those holes.

Now -- for a bit of explanation. I had originally intended to make a "flat" bracket that would bolt down seamlessly. This was before I hit a snag: the seat sliders sit between the rear seat studs snugly with no room to spare, not even enough to put a nut back on the studs without interference. After considering the options, I decided the least annoying solution was to use spacers to hold the sliders up just enough to install the nuts underneath. This upset my vision of a "low" seat mount slightly, but I can cope.

From what I had available, I settled on cut sections of steel tubing. What I really wanted were solid tubing pieces with a bolt hole drilled in the center (essentially really thick washers), but these would do until I could get proper spacers. The risk is that they will vibrate off center, but I decided that they couldn't move far enough to cause problems.



Some high-strength bolts, with a large washer at the rail to prevent bending, and locking nuts.



Obviously off center. It's in the middle of the rail, but the front-to-back position is out. This is why I still plan to replace this with proper drilled spacers.



All four in place.



Put in the car, and bolt it down.



A bit of visible overhang. I may trim off some excess, now that I see how much is visible. Or at lease paint or polish it. Or anodize it.



Once again, some extra material at the back. I was playing it safe to for mounting the seat back far enough. I'll have to trim this to keep any rear passengers from catching their toes. It isn't quite a bad as it looks, since I have the see fully forward or back this this shots.



One down. One to go.



It'll probably be next weekend before I get a chance to do the other one. Hope that helps someone looking for a little different approach to fabricating seat brackets. Comments welcome.





Edited 3 time(s). Last edited Monday, March 12, 2007 12:34 PM


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i will say that its good someone thinks of other ways to do things. and it works so good job there. but it seems like you made alot more work really, i could be wrong but it took me 3 hours to make both of mine, paint them, and have the seats back in the car. also seems like the plate is going to be real visable. not knocking your method cause it did work so dont take this the wrong way.

ImpulseBluCavy wrote:i will say that its good someone thinks of other ways to do things. and it works so good job there. but it seems like you made alot more work really, i could be wrong but it took me 3 hours to make both of mine, paint them, and have the seats back in the car. also seems like the plate is going to be real visable. not knocking your method cause it did work so dont take this the wrong way.

No offence taken. Visibility is an issue, and it is made more obvious because of my choice to allow the seat to travel back further. I'll probably end up painting them to try and match the carpet. The main reason that I went to the extra effort is that I wanted something that felt and looked more solid than I felt I could achieve with the more common design.

Something that has crossed my mind is trying to find a place that can red-anodize the whole thing. Then it would become a presentation piece, rather than out-of-place.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edited Monday, March 12, 2007 1:01 PM


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i would agree, if you can get it red anodized that would look really good, if not you could always just paint it black and have it atleast blend with your carpet. i like the seats though. the red and black go good with the car

Painting it black might not work as well as you think. I've actually got a charcoal interior, so black would probably attact attention to it.



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eh good effort but definitly wouldnt be my approach

Just an update -- got the driver's side bracket finished today, and trimmed both side to reduce the visible area when install. Wouldn't you know it, the spacing was just too different from one side to the other for me to just flip my plywood template over and reuse it to save some work. So it was pretty much a matter of starting from scratch. I've got some graphite-metallic paint that I hope will blend nicely into the carpet, and I plan to prime and paint them over the coming week. I'm also still looking around for some 1.5" steel rod to make solid spacers.

Having done the passenger side first, I also only just recently came to understand the issue with the driver's side buckle, and how it is mounted to the stock slider. I considered finding a mounting point on the new seat, but it's probably safest and simplest just to bolt it down with the bracket. If it is too short, I could fabricate a extension piece rather easily. I might snap a few new pictures later.

On an unrelated note, something else I installed today was an Addco rear anti-sway bar. What a difference! Plus, it's pretty nifty looking since it came coated black instead of the plain metallic look like most of the Addco bars I've seen. Great value for the money, and couldn't be much easier to install.


Edited 1 time(s). Last edited Saturday, March 17, 2007 6:32 PM


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If you painted it it wouldn't to bad.


fast, reliable or cheap. choose two.

Why not cover the plate in carpet that matches.

Sunfires... eh (Tom) wrote:Why not cover the plate in carpet that matches.

I suppose that would work, but I'm not all that good with carpeting, and I think my original carpet would be just faded and old enough that it would look strange to have one new piece patched in. I'm beginning to think the painted plate will look pretty sharp. We shall see.



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Cheap can of automotive primer that should hold up well enough. I settled on a metallic charcoal that should blend into the interior fairly well.


The final shape of the brackets. Notice the additional notch at the rear, to reduce the inconvenience to rear passengers. More corner rounding also. They look oddly reminiscent of the ghosts from Pac-Man.


Scuff up surface to cut through oxidization and improve bond.


First light layer of primer.


Fifth layer of primer, emptied the rattle can.


Since the weather around hear is lingering around the freezing point, and my garage isn't heated, I'm giving the primer at least a full day to fully cure. Stay tuned for the final paint coat, and final installation pictures.



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well i hope that you aren't going to lower the cal or bag it, i did the same brackets for my first set of seats and my back hurt after oh about the first day, youll find a lot better ride if you use the stock springs and sliders and fab to that thats what i did after the first day and you can't see the metal plates and it rides like stock bagged,
just my 2 cents
jason

jason norwood wrote:well i hope that you aren't going to lower the cal or bag it, i did the same brackets for my first set of seats and my back hurt after oh about the first day, youll find a lot better ride if you use the stock springs and sliders and fab to that thats what i did after the first day and you can't see the metal plates and it rides like stock bagged,
just my 2 cents
jason

I'm kind of surprised the seat mounts would make that much difference to your comfort. In any case, It would worry me if the flexing of my seat mounts was all that made my car comfortable...



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your seats are not adjustable tho. are they ??

Paul Tjepkes wrote:your seats are not adjustable tho. are they ??

The seat sliders that come with the seats remain functional, so yes they are adjustable.



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Interesting way of going about it, but how much do those suckers weigh?? I think these are less stand out a little less and look more toe friendly plenty of support at 1/4" thick

seat full forward


seat full back

Admiral558 wrote:Interesting way of going about it, but how much do those suckers weigh?? I think these are less stand out a little less and look more toe friendly plenty of support at 1/4" thick

Those do look pretty slick and sturdy, although I can tell my seats are set back several inches further than those. My seat rails are actually a couple of inches behind the rear bolts, so I would have some problems with stubbed toes no matter which design I used.

I haven't actually had the opportunity to weight my brackets, but I would estimate somewhere around 10 lbs each. This is the latest, following the final coat of paint:






Edited 1 time(s). Last edited Wednesday, March 21, 2007 4:16 PM


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Looks good, can't wait to see them against the carpet color. And yeah my drivers seat is a perfect fit for me in the back position and I don't think I'm going to be growing anytime soon << short (only 5'10") so practically nobody can drive the car in my family...very useful deterrent to borrow it.

Ha -- that makes sense then. I'm 6'2", and I took this opportunity to put the seat in the right place for me.

Yours is a nice theft deterrent idea -- crooks will give up after only a couple of blocks when they're wracked by severe back spasms.



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Took the opportunity to finish up today. Please imagine all these pictures after a good vacuuming and new floor mats -- I'm cleaning house tomorrow. I also did some dash painting, and changed the instrument LEDs from blue to red. Not really seat related, but it's my thread and I'll OT if I want to. I'm also planning to change the leather wheel cover to the same basic design with a darker charcoal instead of the light gray, and red stiching.




The paint color does blend pretty nicely into the interior, but it's difficult to photograph them well. It would help if the capet were cleaner too.




Some dash pieces are now black. Nothing too bold, but I like the effect.




I also stuck in one of those cheap eBay instrument bezel pieces. It was stainless steel, but I painted it black.




When I was changing the LEDs, I almost decided to leave it like this. All blue, with one red LED on the far right -- it made a neat effect that looked like the tach gradiated warmer into the redline. In the end, I went full red.







Like I said, tomorrow is cleaning day. Hope this thread was useful to someone, and that I haven't killed you all with bordom.



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I really like the red dash lights, very nice. the seat brackets do look alot better painted then they did before, still alot of work and aint super crazy about hoe much you see of them, but you did do a good job on making them, so props for that. the ebay gauge bezel appears to have needed some extra prep work on it before paint but it might just be the pic as well. over all i think you are doing a good job and when the interior is cleaner i am sure it will look 100 times better. good job and keep up the work

Good eye on the prep-work for the guage bezel. I was having some trouble getting that to come out smooth -- the final result was something like my third try. I'm getting awfully good and dismantling my dash, in case I should get tired of looking at it.



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Final shots:

This gives a more characteristic view of the brackets, with the seat in a neutral position, and and without direct light to make the metallic finish stand out.




Also, a couple of shots of my finished (for now) and cleaned interior.







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i did mine the toe friendly way and took me about 4 hours but i havent painted them yet though but they work great...