Beilstein seat install

Another Early S member expressed some interest in a writeup I did on another forum so I wanted to share it here as well. I don't generally copy posts between forums but I think this may be of some value here.

Here's the original post from the Quelle911 BBS:

http://www.quelle911.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=726#726

A little background on the seats:
I bought these from Stefan at Gran Turismo Motor Sports in Nevada. For less than $1200 delivered in vinyl and basket weave with sliders, tilting brackets, and five point sub strap holes. I didn’t know it at the time I ordered mine, but Pelican carries these also. Stefan is a great person to deal with and Pelican is a 1st class outfit so you can’t go wrong either way.

Other seats I was considering were the Corbeau Classic IIs, real vintage sport seats, and seats from vintageseats.com. I went with the seats from Gran Turismo after weighing price, availability, etc. Stefan's seats seemed like the most bang for the buck.

Since these seats do not recline, they can limit access to the backseat area of the car. Stefan sells a tilting bracket that helps out with this problem. I only bought one of the for the passenger side. I just tested it out and I can still climb in the backseat with this in place.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1085919787.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1085919805.jpg


The sliders for these seats sit in a much narrower track than Recaro's or the factory seats do. An adapter bracket is necessary to actually bolt everything to the car. Stefan sent me some pics of the brackets he sells suggesting that I make my own bracket for half the cost of his.

I used a 3ft piece of 2" angle, a 3ft piece of 1" angle, and a 3ft piece of 1.5" flat steel to form the brackets on each side of the car. I use the 1" angle as a shelf to support the flat steel that the sliders bolt to. This way the seat height is dropped about 2". I’m basically a midget at about 5'9 and my car is a non-sunroof coupe so I already have plenty of headroom, but I figured the tall people would appreciate this :D.

Here are some initial pics so you guys can see what I was trying to describe with the brackets. I’m going to pull everything back out and paint it since the it is carbon steel and already has surface rust on it:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1085920780.jpg

I also removed the seat belt receiver brackets from my stock seats and bolted them to my new brackets at the factory bolt locations that attach the whole assembly to the tub.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1085922282.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1085922322.jpg

My MIG welder would not burn this stuff (1/8" carbon) so I just bolted everything together. Total cost for both sides was about $40, not too bad.

Here are the seats in the car:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1085919563.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1085919577.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1085919588.jpg

Thoughts and opinions on the Bielsteins so far:

One of things I didn’t like about the Recaro’s that were in my car before is that their high backs slightly interfered with my vision when I looked over my shoulder to change lanes in traffic. It wasn’t a huge deal, but it was something that I never adjusted to for the short time they were in the car. They also seemed like they were blocking my view from the rear view mirror. The low backs of these seats do not obstruct my vision at all.

These seats are awesome. The construction is very solid and they really seem like a quality product so far. They are comfortable and provide good lumbar support.

These seats are very lightweight. The SRDs are not a really heavy seat, but these are probably close to half the weight of the SRDs. I chose steel for the brackets becuase I thoguht I was going to weld them. If you want to be obsessive compulsive about the weight, you could do the brackets lightweight junkie style in Aluminum or even Titanium pretty easily if you have access to the material.

Overall, I’m very happy with the seats. Stefan was great to deal with. I really appreciated his honestly and willingness to show me how to save a few bucks by making my own adapter brackets instead of just selling me two sets of his.

Nice looking seats, but I really think that you should re-appraise the size of the fixings that you re using. Seat belts should be mounted with M12 bolts, and the factory mounted its seats with a minimum of 4 M6 bolts depending on the seat belt location.

I realise that you have used the factory inner seat belt mounts. but these were originally mounted with 2 M6 screws underneath the original seat so that some of the force would have been taken by the bracket and the bolts in shear, whereas you fixings with a single M6 in tension will NOT hold you in an accident.

Thanks Nick. You are 100% correct. Im in the process of making a better set of brackets.

I probably should have posted this in the tech section. Sorry about that.

Phew! That's alright then.

Nice seats and nice write-up, Shuie. How much do you think the brackets weigh? They look substantial.