Sparco America Racing Seat

To give you a sense of what it takes to get one of these seats installed, let's start with my delivery experience. Upon opening the box, I discovered that the seat shipped without any mounting hardware (nuts and bolts). When I asked, the response was, "most of these seats go directly to racing shops where there's plenty of hardware and custom fabrication is usually required anyway". That was just the beginning... The seat is now installed, but only by fate and some intereresting mounting methods.

To install a seat you need the following: Seat Bracket "adapters" to adapt standard seat sliders and tracks to the Porsche floor mounts. Sliders (ability to move the seat back/forth), and side-mount or bottom mount adapters to attach the seat to the sliders. The trouble begins when the first thing you must do is drill through the sliders to allow the floor mounting bolts to go through the slider and the adapter (Guess I "own" these now). Once I purchased the hardware (8mm x 1.25pitch) and drilled the holes, I was ready to install (so I thought). I removed my factory seat and began to install the Sparco seat.

Problem #1 - The right front of the seat hits the shift console and won't line up. Hmmm. Decision Point - I can cut the corner off the seat with a hacksaw, but I'll "own it" or send the seat back and try for something else a little more svelt. I decided to go for it. Even with the corner cut off, it's still a tight fit.

Problem #2, the seat seems a little high and since one of my goals for the seat was to lower my driving position, I was frustrated to measure and discover that the racing seat with all of the adapters was taller than my factory seat. Decision - use the sliders to position the seat to a comfortable position and mark it with the intent of removing the sliders and making a fixed mount (removing 3/4" of seat height). 

Here's where fate comes in. There is only one mounting position that will work mounting the B-K adapters to the Sparco side-mounts without drilling more holes. It's exactly the right position. Things are looking up so, I complete the transition and begin to install again.

Problem #3 - The track bolts are a special large "torx" size (I did get the socket ahead of time from the Snap-On tool man) and are covered by the seat. The only way to tighten them is with an open-end or box wrench. Off to the hardware store for more bolts. Fortunately, they are a standard 10mm 1.5 pitch bolt. Problem Solved, back to bolting it down. I've since purchased a ratcheting box-end wrench to make the process a little easier. 

Problem #4 - With no play in the mounting, it's tough to get an exact fit. So I devised a method of installing the seat with the right-side bracket attached and mounting it to the floor. Mounting the left-side bracket to the floor and finally mounting the left-side bracket to the seat. I'm sure I'll get more efficient at taking it in/out as I do it before/after each event.

Finally, removing the factory seat triggers the airbag light.  If you can, get an extra loop from your dealer.  I've taped mine to the bottom of the racing seat and I plug it in when switching seats.  As long as you complete the switch without turning the key on, you are OK.