Bucket Seats to Factory Sliders *New from Brey-Krause Auto*

[Pat]

Did you reuse your OEM sliders? The word on the street is they are a PITA to remove from the OEM seat. I'd like to learn more about that. If it really is that difficult, might it be best to buy new OEM sliders?

[redlined600]

Good stuff!

These are far less than I thought they might be so good news there.
However, Looking at the pictures it looks as though the set might be as low as it can go in the mount before contacting the mechanism. I wonder if this is low enough.

[timurrrr]

Originally Posted by Pat

Did you reuse your OEM sliders? The word on the street is they are a PITA to remove from the OEM seat. I'd like to learn more about that. If it really is that difficult, might it be best to buy new OEM sliders?

+1, more info and pics would be great.

I've been considering to make DIY lowering mounts for stock seats.
Would really appreciate if someone could take pics of the bottom of the seat with the sliders removed, as well as measure the diameters of the mounting holes, as well as distances between them.
So far I was too lazy to pull my seat out just to understand feasibility

[Pat]

I spoke with the original poster about this, as well as Brey-Krause. They were both very helpful. I plan on doing this in the next couple months and will document the process for you.

[Pat]

A friend and I installed one-piece seats in our BRZs recently. I have a Sparco QRT-R and he has an OMP (WRC?). We both used OEM sliders on these Brey-Krause mounts. These mounts are a fantastic option for people that want to retain the OEM slider. The whole system works really well together.
I started to document the whole process, but after getting part of the way through realized it just isn't necessary. The job just isn't that difficult. The first time through the process we spent about six hours on it. The second time it probably took less than two. Some people have really struggled removing the OEM slider from the OEM seat. I can see how this would be if you didn't have the following tools:
swivel adapter for 12 mm socket
12 mm offset wrench
12 mm ratcheting wrench
E-torx for seat removal (pre-2017 models only)
But if you're reasonably competent with a wrench (unsure if we qualify as that), and you have these tools, you should be able to get the job done. There are other tools necessary, but these are the lesser-common tools I recommend.
Here is a sampling of the pictures I took. I believe these should help anyone struggling to get the job done, as these are the places we struggled until finding the right tool for the job.

[Westen86]

I can vouch for the seat bolts being a PITA. I used a T10 and they rounded like lead. Had to drill them out, reverse tap. I replaced them with 15 or 17mm hardened bolts. Socket just fits in the rail.

[redlined600]

Can you please post an image of how low the seat can go in relation to the slider mounting points. I'm still concerned they won't allow the seat to go low enough.

[ka-t_240]

Are you seated lower than stock with these?

[abemo]

Originally Posted by redlined600

Can you please post an image of how low the seat can go in relation to the slider mounting points. I'm still concerned they won't allow the seat to go low enough.

Here is a picture of my OMP WRC on these mounts. I don't think I can get it lower in the rear than the middle slot without it interfering with the OEM slider and allowing the seat to lock in place. I can go one slot lower in the front but like the recline I currently have.

Originally Posted by ka-t_240

Are you seated lower than stock with these?

I'm probably a little lower than stock but not much. Pat was able to get lower than I was with his sparco seat. So it will probably depend on the shape of your seat and how much clearance you have to allow the slider bar to lock the seats in place.

[Pat]

We worked on our seats more yesterday. I wanted more headroom and for my Sparco QRT-R and more rearward tilt than the original installation. I am 6'3" and my seat was originally mounted on the middle of five holes in the rear and second from the top in the front. I was hoping to drop the rear instead of raise the front, but unfortunately there wasn't enough room under the rear of the seat to mount it any lower than the middle hole. Therefore, my only option for more rearward tilt was to raise the front. I wasn't excited about that, as I was also hoping to sit lower in the car, and raising the front didn't exactly help with that. But I raised the front one hole anyway. I ended up with the front of my seat being mounted as high as possible. With this arrangement the seat has as much rearward lean as possible, which still isn't all that much in my opinion. I'll spend more time in it soon to have a better idea of how it feels, but I think this will be a good setting in the long run. Here are some pictures of the seat in it's current state. You can see there is very little room underneath to make any changes. Surprisingly, I feel like I am lower in the car after raising the front one hole. I suspect this is due to the angle of my torso being less upright. I suspect I have about 1/2 inch more headroom than the OEM seat with this configuration.

[Pat]

Getting the OEM seat belt receptacle to work was another challenge. Abe bought a variety of extensions (both hard and soft) to experiment with. We thought taking the shorter passenger's side receptacle and moving it to the driver's side with an extension would work best. But after removing the passenger's seat we realized the electronic connections we different than the driver's side. So we abandoned that idea.
The best combination we found was to keep the original driver's side receptacle and just clip in the shortest soft extension we could find. It actually works quite well, with a couple exceptions. You need to hold it up out of the way when sitting down so you don't sit on it. Also, the lap belt doesn't sit quite as low across your hips as the OEM belt. The difference is not large, but it is noticeable. I don't consider it significantly less safe than the OEM belt positioning, but it is a little different. I'm going to live with it a little while and see what I think of it. As it is now, one of the benefits is that the hard plastic receptacle sits above where your hips contact the seat, so you don't feel the hard plastic at all.
I have considered shortening the metal "arm" of the OEM belt receptacle in an effort to lower the belt on my lap. However, if I were to do that, the receptacle the belt connects to would then be lower, potentially pinching between my hips and the side of the seat. Also, it would like hit the plastic trim piece of the seat that the receptacle passes through. If I lower/shorten it even more the receptacle could live in that hole in the seat, which would make fastening the belt a little cumbersome. However, I think that would be ideal if I could make it work without the receptacle falling down between the seat and transmission tunnel. I don't really think it would fall down there if the receptacle lived in the seat hole, but it is a consideration. I'm just going to live with it as is for now and decide on that in the future.
Here's what it looks like now:









Hope that helps!

[Vracer111]

Looks nice Pat! I will say one thing that IMMENSELY help with taller drivers (6'2" here) in the FR-S/BRZ/86 is the 949 Racing 50mm steering spacer - you will not believe how much better and ideal it is to have the seat, pedals, shifter and steering wheel all at the PERFECT distances for your body. Stock steering wheel adjustment is very lacking and never able to be close enough, was always a compromise between feet or hands being perfect distance. I could never drive a stock steering column adjustment one again after having the 949 steering spacer. These cars stock are designed for short Japanese people... uncomfortable for 6'+ Americans with longer legs and arms...

[Pat]

Abe had problems with his OMP WRC-R rocking and twisting. It just didn't feel as solid as my QRT-R. We thought it might be because the slider lever was barely touching the underside of the seat, shown here:



He felt the seat was already higher than what he wanted, and therefore was hesitant to use the next higher hole in the side mount, but we couldn't figure out what else might be causing the problem. As the seat was already in it's highest position in front, we had to raise it in the rear. Not only does that put the driver's head closer to the headliner, but it adds more forward lean, neither of which was appealing to him. So we raised the seat to this position:



Fortunately, the seat felt much more sold, and the rocking was eliminated. Unfortunately, he now sits higher than in the OEM seat, and leans forward more than he would like. Hopefully he'll chime in here after a couple weeks of usage to see what he things of the positioning.
Also, I thought you guys might appreciate seeing what the headroom is like with the WRC-R and Brey Krause mount in this setting:

(Again, I'm 6'3")


I'm unsure how tall Abe is.

[redlined600]

Thanks so much for posting these, it was extremely helpful! The bottom of the OMP seats is just not advantageous for these kind of mounts. My current seat is nearly right on the floor, and I like sitting low so these just aren't going to work for me. Unfortunate, as it looks like a very nice product.