MadaboutKitcars

I have been sitting in my car with the body shell placed on the frame and trying to work out where the seats should go. They need to be further back than they were originally which puts them in the foot well of what was the back seat.

I was chatting with Gary about putting a platform over the foot well and then the seat on top. When I tried this with a bit of wood and a childs booster seat I immediately felt too high in the car.

I am now wondering about building my own seats so I can get them nice and low. They will be fixed but then I am unlikely to grow much taller.

Any advice?
Any warnings?
any legal stuff I need to know about?

My design thinking on design so far is for the seat base. It will be a rectangle of ply, longer than wide, with a smaller rectangle cut out where my bum will rest.

The hole with be covered with a criss cross of rubber strapping to give me some suspension above the original foot well. This hole and the rest of the seat base will be covered with a reasonably hard furniture foam in a single slab and then a thin softer foam cover in two pieces to give one pad beneath the knees and one piece beneath the bum.

The two soft panels are partly there for comfort and partly to give the seat base some shape. The total thickness of this has yet to be decided but it should be significantly lower than a seat on runners.

I am having a windscreen fitted, not an aeroscreen so the MOT sight line isn't relevant.

You're on untested ground here I'm afraid as nobody's got to the stage of fitting seats to a G46 as far as I'm aware?

There's no legal reason why you shouldn't sit on a bit of sponge covered ply glued to the floor, but just spare a few moments to think about how the finished job is going to look. Will it really be in keeping with the rest of the car, or would a slimline bucket seat suit it better?

I have to admit that the seating position is critical to the look of the finished car, though, and, without wishing to criticise anybody else's builds I've seen a couple of cars that have the occupants sitting way too high for my liking. I'd seriously consider trying a pair of Dax Cobra seat shells which fit the Spyder cockpit really well so should also fit the G46 - they mount quite a way forward and give a very reclined driving position (especially with lowered pans), very much like the original 50's and 60's racing cars had back in the day. I've mounted mine on a pair of modified runners but there's no reason why you couldn't just bolt them straight to the floor.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dax-AC-Cobra-427-Fibreglass-Seat-Shell-/130625517895?pt=UK_CarsParts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM&hash=item1e69e33947

Whatever you choose to do, good luck with it and I'm really looking forward to seeing a finished G46 in paint.

Oh, and what screen are you going to fit? I believe the 356 Speedster screen will fit the Spyder body and I was tempted to go with doors, a screen and a folding roof, but ultimately decided it would just be too complicated.

I was looking at the bucket seats but could really do with something folding forward. I agree with what you are saying about the look though, hence my dilemma. Perhaps I could mount the buckets on flip forward hinges? Emergency stops with flip forward ejector seats - perhaps not.

Screen may well be bespoke. The bloke I bought the car from does custom screens for the Sun Seeker boats and reckons he can knock me something up with side screens/windows.

Plans for my G46 seats are to have a forward hinge with a pull out locking pin at the rear to hold the seat in position.

It would be a shame to fix the seats in position and waste all of that space in the back.

It is the storage space that I need to. Photo's of your seats as soon as they exist please

I've set mine up so you need to slide both seats forward to open the luggage bay. This is partially for added security and partially because I couldn't work out a way of tilting the seats without raising the height.

... this is a key issue for me and one that I have been worried about for some time. I bought a pair of seats from ebay on advice from on high and guessed they'd have to be hacked down to size, unfortunately without any design drawings I have no idea where/how they are going to be seated (no pun intended) or fixed.

If the seats are set that far back that's good as your head'll be near the hump pad and not a foot away, which would look lame, but the down side is, as you say, how do you access the 'luggage area' if the seats don't tilt? Also, will you need to extend the steering column and can you reach the pedals with the seats so far back.

I like Tonys (tlrtone) idea, to use the old Land Rover series 11/111a seats, I have found some on the [url]www.paddockspares.com[/url] site part codes MRC6985 and MTC3181, very cheap compared to other web sites

seats G46

WCA

As you know we have moved the front bulk head 200mm back so our seat position will be in the rear footwell, as others have said if you do that won't the steering wheel and pedals be out of reach. We have had to cut out the hump in the floor where the original seats sat as the back of your knees sit to high on the floor.

Don't worry about access to the boot it's a 50's sport car!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I agree with the last comment tlttone solution was elegant, shame they do not give the base sizes on that web site.

I think the seats have to be fixed rigid and as with my 289 I bought Richfield seats and then cut the frame around so they sat flat on the floor or in the case of the G46 so they sit within the footwell

Now fixed the doors shut we may need a ladder to get into the car!

I have measured the distance between the pedals and where the back of the seat is on my pick up, my TVR and my Merc to see where I need to sit in the G46. It turns out I sit quite a long way back in my normal driving still, between 105cm (pick up) and 115 cm (Merc). This is fine for the G46 and sitting on the tub, I can still comfortably reach the wheel and gear stick.

Thanks for the link to those seats, I had missed them when looking at other threads. I think they are the answer to my question if I can confirm the sizes. I have just emailed them asking for dimensions for the inner and the outer seat that they do.

Charman - I am hoping that thee door hinge from the Scimi used as a mono hinge will let me keep the doors functional. Boot space is necessary for the picnic hamper and blanket - mine is a 50's racer retired and kitted out for fast road use. Having seem the space in front of the engine I was thinking of putting a wine cooler in one front wing and a cigar humidor in the other.

Did you go paddockspares as the cost of there seats is far cheaper that Britparts or a landy dealer/supplier.

Paddockspares - Tick

Boot catches are possibly from here : http://www.fordtractorspares.co.uk/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse&product_type_id=6

I agree that those Land Rover deluxe inner seat bases and backs are great value and an elegant seating solution. I feel it's the way they're fitted that's critical though - unless you radically lower the floor, the base needs mounting quite a way forward with the back inclined at an angle to give a very laid back driving position.

These are low body cars: mine is less than 29" from the ground to the top edge of the back of the cockpit, and there's under 20" from the (flat) floor to the same point -





I'm sure the G46 won't be much different, so if you mount the seat base at the back of the cockpit and sit upright you will stick too far out of the top of the car.

Try measuring from the floor to the top edge of the cockpit, then subtract the depth of the seat base. A 3" cushion would leave me with 16" cockpit height, for example. Sit on a dining room chair and measure up from the base, everything above 16" will stick out of the cockpit if you sit at the back. Ideally (imho) you want your shoulders to be as near to level with the cockpit edge as you can get them, which is going to require a laid back, knees bent driving position rather than upright with legs stretched. This will have major implications for both the look and the experience of driving the finished car - I for one don't want my swede sticking up into the slipstream at 130mph, or even 50mph come to that...

Anyway, good luck with whatever seating solution you eventually adopt.

I know this is spyder related but the principal is the same, but one simple thing that really helped me height-wise was tilting my seats!

I must admit that i stumbled across this accidentially as the Cobra (sorry for swearing) buckets in mine if fitted flat, even with my dropped floors, would stick out above teh cockpit. So fitted them tilted and they fitted nice but that also had the side effect of me sitting lower due to the reclined angle and it gave me a much nicer (in my opinion) driving posisiton and got my head out of the breeze!

Just a thought

I like the idea of tilting them slightly, I will be putting that in plan, sad really don't get the kit for five month, so by that time the chassis and engine should be prep'd and all the part hopefully purchased just to start building.

The internet is killing my bank balance, the misses will kill me if she finds out. Well anyway that should be my seat sorted anyway.

Has any one thought about using the Land Rover Runners sightly mod'ed.

The back of the cockpit in the G46 is already lowered as it was the foot well for the back seats originally. You can see all the dust sitting in the lowered bit.



i was thinking of mounting the seat squab in the depression so that the front of the cushion is just above the floor. I am covering the green plastic floor with some oak finished 4mm ply that will be yacht varnished to within of it's life. This should result in me sitting low with my legs pretty much straight ahead either resting on, or just above, a smooth wooden floor.

The seat back would be mounted on a piece of ply sloping back slightly and fixed to the humps but on the inside so again the cushion will stand proud of the front of the humps. I am not sure whether to put padding on the humps or not yet.

The seat back and the ply it is mounted on will pivot forward from the base to give access to the space behind. This means the bit of wood fixed behind the humps and dropping down to a little above the black frame will actually act the rest that stops the seat backs falling into the space behind. I have read this paragraph twice and am not sure it makes sense but I know what i mean.

Sort of like this

That would work, should look good but as others have said, it would be best to build it with a reclined back as it helps to keep you nice and low. Having said that, if you are fitting a proper windscreen this isnt so much of an issue and will also help you to look lower as the screen will be above head hight anyway.

The seat back will be reclined. The bottom of the seat back will be level with the door opening in the photo and the top will be almost flush with the hump.

The photo is at the wrong angle to show it properly but there is a reasonable distance if you look between the door shut and the metal frame.