Installed a Recaro Sport seat last night
 

Man, oh man, what an improvement! I cannot believe how much of a difference it makes over the stock seats.

Number one, before starting on this, DISCONNECT THE NEGATIVE LEAD ON YOUR BATTERY! Airbag systems are not designed to go off when they are just being disconnected, but electricity can be a funny thing and you don't want to have it go off unexpectedly. Better safe than sorry and if pulling the neg lead on your battery takes you more than 15 seconds, you probably aren't qualified to do this install yourself anyway.

Installation was a bit more of a convoluted mess than I was expecting, since I decided to use the Planted seat brackets that were supposed to be a direct fit. The seat bracket bolt holes matched up to the floorplan, but aside from that, I was disappointed overall in the product for at least my application. It was obviously a "multi-fit design" for the plate itself, and then had mounting ears welded on to fit the specific application. It was also heavy, which negates the weight saving of going with a lighter seat, although by the time I was done with my sawzall cutting the bracket down to fit my specific requirements, it was about 1/3rd lighter than what I started with.

The main issue was that the Recaro Sport seat bottom extends below the seat rail mounting. While I *could* have put a 1.25" spacer rail in between the slider and the Planted bracket, which would have allowed the bracket to be used "as-is", I was also wanting to lower the overall seat height. As a result, mounting directly to the Planted bracket wouldn't allow it to slide forward or backwards for position adjustment, henceforth I broke out the sawzall and went to work.

Once I had cutaway the back rail and test fit the seat, I also drilled a hole on each side of the Planted bracket to allows the seat rail sliders to be centered more to my liking than the original holes allowed. At that point, it became a "bolt together" project. I put some spacers on the backside between the Planted seat bracket and the sliders to adjust the angle of the base upward slightly, but it worked out to my satisfaction.

Next issue was properly mounting the seat belt receiver. I removed the receiver and sensor wiring from the factory seat and attached it to the seat belt receiver bracket on the Planted seat bracket, but the holes were different diameters so I had to come up with a way to shim each of the holes. This is very important, as the bolt running through those holes holding it together is what holds YOU in place if you get into an accident. You can't have a lot of slop in there, or it will act as a shearing machine and will effectively cut the bolt holding your seatbelt in place if you get hit hard enough. What I did was find two nuts that were just larger than the respective holes and put my bench grinder to work, rounding the edges so that they fit through the holes. I also had to make one of them narrower by grinding down the face of it. I then found some appropriate sized washers and assembled it so that I had a multi collared bolt that held the seat belt receiver in place but allowed the unit to rotate properly.

After that, I popped a 3.3 ohm resister into the airbag harness, bolted the seat in, reconnected the neg battery lead, and took it for a drive. I am absolutely in love with the Recaro seats and the lowered position fixed a couple of issues I had with the factory seats. First, it changed the angle of my right leg when I am working the accelerator and brake to a more normal position with less bite into the back of my thigh from the seat cushion. Its a little thing but I am positive that alone will make some of the cross country drives I take in my FR-S much more comfortable. Secondly, the sight line is much improved as I actually look out the windshield instead of down the hood. Lastly, it puts the door armrest and the center console at a perfect level for me.

Next will be to tackle the passenger side seat. I will be able to cut/prep the other bracket ahead of time , which should make the installation go a lot faster, and I think I will pull out my lathe and cut down a shim for the seatbelt receiver, but my main concern is the passenger seat pressure sensor pad. Does anyone have the part number for that handy, or perhaps one they want to sell? I don't want to cannibalize my factory seat as I will be turning my current car in for a 2014 in March/April, and I want to be able to just throw the originals back in without having to redo everything.

Regards, ...Scott

Sounds complicated!

Did you take any pictures or videos?

Nick C.

Its not *that* bad, but I didn't want to compromise on how I wanted it to fit, and I also wanted to be safe and properly engineered.

By the way, I don't want to give the impression that I am bad mouthing Planted. I am sure its a good bracket for lots of folks, it just wasn't right for me.

I didn't take pictures while I was installing it, and what I did to that Planted bracket wasn't pretty so I wouldn't want to show that to anyone. lol I will be pulling it out at some point in time and making it prettier (grinding the cuts smooth and shaping it so it looks like a finished product) and I will document the install and post pictures at that point.

The main thing I want to stress is that is a lot more to replacing the seats in a car than just "unbolt the old one and bolt the new one in". Seats are one of the most important safety devices in a car as they have to absorb impact while staying stationary and protect the occupant. Not having the proper bolts securing it to the floorplan or having the seatbelts (or seatbelt receiver) improperly mounted can kill people.

EDIT: I went ahead and snapped a picture of the remains of the bracket I installed and the one for the passenger side that I haven't done surgery on yet. As you can see, it was a pretty healthy chunk of metal but it is still plenty rigid once its bolted down.

I mounted my recaros directly to the planted brackets with no sliders. I have pole positions with recaro side mount brackets. I just had to drill 4 holes in each plated bracket to nut and bolt the recaro side brackets to it. I also made seat belt extender brackets since it was a pain to fasten the factory seatbelts originally since they were so low comapred to the side height of the pole position.

I took the weight sensor from my factory seat and installed it in the recaro. Was a bit of a pain to remove

Brb restarting my phone cant see pics

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

:needpics:

The rigid back Pole Position seat should fit perfectly on that bracket since the seat bottoms are fairly flat, iirc. The Sport seats dip down a good bit (at least an inch) from the seat slider rail mounts, and thats what was hitting the Planted bracket.

OK, due to some requests, I snapped some more pictures...

First picture show the depth that the seat bottom goes below where the slider rail mounts.

Second picture does an admittedly poor job showing where the unmodified Planted bracket interferes with the bottom of the seat.

Third picture... beer time! :)

wow, thats a lot of droop on the seat pan. or maybe its exaggerated without sliders.

I was very close to picking up recaro sports or a sportster. But recently came across a deal on an rx8 recaro and made that work mounted directly to iron straps on the floor. My seat pan droop is a bit less significant, but still is resting directly on the floor.


The addition in headroom has made the car much more ape friendly. Gf hates it though.

Its definitely exaggerated without the sliders, but those are approx 1" thick and that still leaves a little more than an 1" to deal with. I was surprised as well, but its more than worth it when you actually sit in them. :)

I had a Pair of All Carbon SPG Racer's in my Saleen Speedster !

Talk about a Tight fit !

Thank God my Girl and I are Not Big or we would of been Stuck in them for ever !

They weight a little over 2 Kilos each:burnrubber: !

Now do you have a rear Harness bar or what are you using for Belts?

Looks nice, wish it came this way!

hi,
just wonder if those bracket also can be used in a subaru GDB?

I installed a Recaro Pole Position seat and this is what my planted seat base looked after I took close to 50% of its weight off.
It's really excessively heavy. And there's no reason for it as it only serves as an adapter between the chassis and the seat (which are already sturdy by themselves).

any pics of the pole position installed? does it slide easily?

I initially installed it with the buddy club seat rails.
It did slide well enough but they had significant play. Because I didn't know whether any other slides would have less play I decided to fix the seat directly onto a seat base. However, the planted seat base is heavier than the buddy club rails alone, which is why I flexed some material off (now the screws are also more accessible).

Since I'm the only driver I don't need it to slide and the passenger seat is still the original one. I primarily used it for autocross purposes and most competitors don't use slides either.

It's currently not installed (I'm not driving this car in the winter). I will post pictures once it is installed again.

Here you go.

I also made a buckle bracket such that I could get a belt buckle extension through that opening in the seat.

How easy was it to make that bracket for your driver seat buckle? Mine is currently sitting to tall to feed the OEM 3 point through the hole.

I also tried using the rear seat buckle, the length was perfect but its angled towards the seat so you can't buckle the seat belt in.

God forbid you get into an accident - how would you say these seats hold up? I've always wondered about that, especially if the seat or bracket are modified.

Sorry for the late response.
It's just a simple steel plate with 3 holes (2 holes are connected to the bracket of the baseplate and one to the belt buckle). The steel plate has about double the thickness of the belt buckle.
(One could also shorten the buckle and buy a second buckle for the original seat, but I chose not to because of safety concerns).

The new base plate is much thicker than the original seat base and there are no sliders. The seat is essentially directly connected to the chassis. So the seat would be holding up better than the original seat/sliders.
Also, the seat is FIA approved (stricter ruling than road traffic legalisation).

And all the parts which hold the original buckle are made out of much thicker steel than the belt buckle (so the belt buckle would be the first part to fail).

The only thing which is missing is the airbag in the seat. However, my daily-driver doesn't have any airbags in any seat either and I don't plan to install any.
Besides that I've driven motorcycles and flown small planes and grown up near a farm with tons of hazardous machinery which all is statistically more dangerous than driving a car: I always buckle up, don't drive drunk and don't drive above speed limits on public roads, which provides more safety than any number of airbags can.

Did you have any issues bolting the planted seat base down? It doesn't look like there is a lot of clearance for the front two bolts so I'm worried my wrench won't fit in the space. Also, what was the best way for you to find out where to drill the holes in the seat base?

How much for your front seat(s)?? :lol: But seriously

I bolt the planted base down first, then the recaro side brackets. Then drop the bucket between the side brackets and bolt them in. I sat the seats on the planted brackets and positioned them to where I wanted and marked then made my holes

Was there any trouble with the front two bolts on the seat base? The clearance to be able to torque those front two bolts down looks slim at best.

We just use an 8 point wrench

The passenger seat is still installed and the driver seat is not for sale.
This is not my DD. I use this car primarily for slalom racing. Not sure why this is supposed to be funny. Don't they have hobbies in Canada?

It was is an inside joke. Mah bad.

How was the seat height after switching to just the base and seat?

Sorry for the late response, I was adjusting/increasing the seat height using something like this (cut to length):
http://www.cap-aluprofile.com/S1084040L.jpg
(I think I have kinda long legs and a short torso, so I'm not sure whether this info is of any use to you).

(FWIW, none of the guys I race against use any slides.)

I also had to drill new holes when installing aftermarket seats using the planted seat bracket. I was expecting a 'plug and play' scenario. That seems to rarely happen these days.

How did you change the seat height with that piece? Not visualizing it very well haha


Any issues adjusting to the lower seat height?

Any issues adjusting to the lower seat height?[/QUOTE]

I'm 5'8 on a good day, so height was't really an issue for me w/ the planted bracket.:sigh:

I'm 5'8 on a good day, so height was't really an issue for me w/ the planted bracket.:sigh:[/QUOTE]

Not sure if I conveyed my question clearly, did the aftermarket seat being lower feel weird to you vs the OEM seat height? I know the planted base w/o sliders will drop you a couple inches as far as seating position goes vs OEM. I too am 5'8 :thumbup:

I connected the seat base to the seat side mounts using 4 screws (one in each corner).

I used 4 of these aluminum blocks as washers/spacers (screw goes through the center hole). They were placed between the seat base and the seat side mounts. (In order to get some extra height which I had with the rails before.).

A machine shop cut those aluminum blocks to length (length of about 1.5" each), which took about a minute.

Def dropped the seat height and took some getting used to, but I prefer my chair to be lower when throwing the car around. :cheers: I'm running a Nardi 350mm wheel and have it adjusted to the lowest setting as well.

Very nice! I need to do the same thing as I just purchased Recaro RS-GE for my car.

So did you just shorten the length of the stock belt buckle bracket and connect belt buckle extension? Did you cut the stock one or make a new one?

I left the stock belt buckle as is.

I made an extension (basically a sheet metal piece with 3 holes, 2 holes to connect with the seat base bracket and one hole to connect with the belt buckle). This extension moved the connection hole to the stock belt buckle about 5 inches to the rear. This way I didn't have to shorten it.

If possible I would weld a new bracket to the seat base, so you don't need an extension. (In my case this wasn't an option because the seat was too far back.)

I see. Thanks for the info! I will try something similar with mine. :)

You have a diy or did you purchase from a company for the extender