Installing Racing Seats in my Street Car

My good friend, "carbon" is giving me an incredible deal on a pair of Sparco Pista seats that I intend to install in my old Boxster. Is it as easy as mating the Porsche seat tracks to the Sparco seats? I'm only 5'10" tall, so I don't want to mount them so low that I can't see over the wheel. What do I need to know?

It may be possible that they don't have enough lower back support, so you will need to buy a small pillow to compensate. That's what I had to do when I replaced my blown stock seat for a Corbeau Sport Race seat. I used the companies bracket because that's the easiest way to mount it.

You won't know until you have both of them in your hands and try to fit them in there. The layback or height might be all wrong. Just the shape of the stock sliders may not work. Best bet is to use a set of sliders that are as simple as possible and flat. You can build up or down from them wherever you need to. TR7s aren't great at too much, but they have the best seat sliders I have ever seen for doing swaps. They are flat and only an inch tall or so. They are made from steel, but they are light. The only thing joining the two sides is the slider adjuster bar, so you can cut that and widen or narrow them at will.

Stock sliders are welded to the stock seats. Your easiest/best way to install those is to get a set of the Recaro sliders. They should bolt right into the Boxster stock mounts and then the Sparco side plates will bolt to them...

Jeep TJ sliders look exactly the same as the ones that Sparco sells. Flat, lots of attachment points, only an inch tall, and they had to meet some OEM crash standards.

docwyte wrote: Stock sliders are welded to the stock seats.

In reply to docwyte:

Strange, mine were simply bolted to the undersides of my stock seats (fastened with 6mm Allen bolts). Different year Boxster, maybe? Mine's a very early '97 (1996 production date). That being the case, do I need any additional parts or is it safe to just make some adapters?

I have a set of 2004 GT3 seats that I put into my 911. I'm pretty sure that the rails bolt on. They were also the same as the seats in my Cayman, so the Boxster should be the similar.

This is the passenger seat from my Cayman. I'm pretty sure that the rail can be unbolted, but I don't think that the shape lends itself to the easy installation of race seat brackets.

Do you DD this car? Not sure what ingress/egress is like on a Boxster, but in my S2000 a fixed back seat made it pretty berkeleying annoying pretty quickly.

In reply to ProDarwin:

That's actually my biggest concern. Although it's not my DD, I do use it +/- 2000 miles a year on the street, and I park it in a fairly narrow garage. Any suggestions for seats that offer better lateral support than stock, but that won't make ingress/egress such a pain?

In reply to M030:

You could always get the more aggressive Boxster sport seats used from another car. If you watch Craigslist like a hawk you can frequently find great deals on used reclining Recaros too.

When I was last looking into Boxsters I'm pretty sure I read that a large number of aftermarket seats won't fit properly due to width, IIRC, so you might want to look more into that.

In reply to pointofdeparture:

Thanks! I'm looking at the aftermarket "sport seat conversion kit" that uses my standard Boxster lower cushion, but replaces the seat backs with the more deeply bolstered "sport seat" backs. The kit is about $900, but if it ticks all the boxes, that doesn't scare me. All the boxes = seats that hold me in place better without making every ingress or egress attempt feel like a circus trick. Bonus points if the seats look cool, too

http://wedgebrackets.com/seat-brackets-home/

ONLY use double locking sliders

In reply to M030: I actually think your light use of your Boxster makes it a good candidate for a race bucket seat, since ingress and egress isn't as important as a daily driver.

In reply to Mr_Clutch42:

Thanks, Mr_Clutch. That was my thinking, too. My wife is the one who started shooting holes in my logic. So, Sparco racing seats it is. This thread did exactly what I hoped for: reinforced my idea and gave me some ideas about mounting them in my car. Thanks!

Zombie thread. Revived because I really need to find out what I'm going to do about seatbelts when I install my nice new racing seats. I guess this is only an issue because I do not want to install racing harnesses, and I've decided against deleting the SRS. So, what I'm asking you, fellow GRMers, is how to make normal, DOT 3pt safety belts work effectively with seats that were designed for racing harnesses? Some Porsches, like the early 996 GT3 and 993 RS have done so (successfully, I presume, as they were street legal and had racing seats w/o harnesses)

I welded a "tab" onto my seat mount that I could bolt the factory seatbelt plug onto. If yours bolt on like the Cayman ones shown above, it should be pretty simple. I just set mine where it made sense with my waist and the seat. Works like a charm.

You can just see it here:

yes my car is dirty......

^The problem with that is, the lap belt sits across the seat, not across the driver. You pretty much have to put the belt through the harness holes, and get a buckle extender and put that through on the other side.

ProDarwin wrote: ^The problem with that is, the lap belt sits across the seat, not across the driver. You pretty much have to put the belt through the harness holes, and get a buckle extender and put that through on the other side.

Ill have to take a pic with me in it, yes it does somewhat, but the sides are low enough on this seat (or im too fat ) its still rest across my lap.

ok I realize this is just crotch shot, but it gets the point across..... Belt is sitting on me, not he sides of the seat.

YMMV depending on seat design...

I got it done yesterday, I got a kit from Brey-Krause and, with the exception of the seat belts, it wasn't even too difficult. I will say this, though, installing some real seats is the very best upgrade I've ever made to my old Boxster. Now it does something very few Boxsters do: it feels special to drive. Since I can't afford a Boxster Spyder (or a Ferrari) yet, somehow a couple of racing seats in a ratty old Boxster is ticking the boxes for me. I cannot wait to get it to the next autocross!

I advise using some kind of patch or cover over the left leg bolster on your seat or it will wear through in no time.

In reply to Will:

Copy that! I'm on it

You are some brave guys. I had a Carbon OMP fixed back racing seat in my BMW daily for a year. I am currently blaming my bad back problems on it.