The Race Seat Fitment Thread

[slicer]

Interesting move. I didn't think of that option (re using QFP latch for interior lap belt attachment). I of course wouldn't want to do that my my current configuration since my receiver is outboard. I think I could use an e46 rear receiver as you suggested. I just thought the pretensioner had some value - but you have a point.

[Obioban]

FYI there’s two length rear receivers on the e46, if you’re using that— for the center seat or outside seats. One will likely work better than the other.

[DR-JEKL]

For those of you with raceseats, how do you mount gopro etc?

Obviously on OEM seats the headrest bars are there, since they're deleted on race seats I'm curious as to how you guys mount them??

[turbo_joe]

Originally Posted by DR-JEKL

For those of you with raceseats, how do you mount gopro etc?

Obviously on OEM seats the headrest bars are there, since they're deleted on race seats I'm curious as to how you guys mount them??

Windshield suction cup mount and roll cage mount.
https://youtu.be/cdCIqEpAbLk

[DR-JEKL]

Hey guys those whom are using sparco side mounts (or any other mounts) in conjunction with floor plates and the OEM seat belt setup, how did you guys mounts your seatbelt receptacle?



VAC have these offerings but its quite expensive for me $300 USD shipped and thinking perhaps they're not needed?

[roastbeef]

Originally Posted by kyrix1st

Finally got my seat installed. For those running 6 point harness, you can run them without removing the backseat: you can get them hooked to child seat isofix mounts.

how much does it weigh?

[Azeka1]

Originally Posted by DR-JEKL

Hey guys those whom are using sparco side mounts (or any other mounts) in conjunction with floor plates and the OEM seat belt setup, how did you guys mounts your seatbelt receptacle?



VAC have these offerings but its quite expensive for me $300 USD shipped and thinking perhaps they're not needed?

Difficult to get a good picture, but I am using VAC Floor mounts along with the “Lap belt mounting kit” and “Anti-Sub mounting bracket”. This allows me to run a 6point harness along with retaining the OEM belt.

On the side with the seatbelt reciprocal, I used a longer Eye bolt and sandwiched the OEM receprocal in. This is on a Z4M and I think the e90 reciprocal might be a different design (no hole to bolt through) meaning you’ll also need the VAC adapter as well. Hope this helps!

[kyrix1st]

Originally Posted by roastbeef

how much does it weigh?

I believe the net weight is 5.6kg for glass fiber (the one in the picture.)

For carbon fiber seats, it is indeed lighter at 4.4kg, but 3 times the price of glass fiber.

[DR-JEKL]

Originally Posted by Azeka1

Difficult to get a good picture, but I am using VAC Floor mounts along with the “Lap belt mounting kit” and “Anti-Sub mounting bracket”. This allows me to run a 6point harness along with retaining the OEM belt.

On the side with the seatbelt reciprocal, I used a longer Eye bolt and sandwiched the OEM receprocal in. This is on a Z4M and I think the e90 reciprocal might be a different design (no hole to bolt through) meaning you’ll also need the VAC adapter as well. Hope this helps!

Thanks that really helps!

So in my scenario I wouldnt need the antisub bracket, just the VAC lap mounting belt kit? If my seats are going to be hard up against the console I may be best to buy the VAC seatbelt receptacle's since they're slimmer?

Or can I just mount the VAC lap belt mounting kit to the sparco side mounts?

[Z K]

Adding to this thread. I recently installed a Recaro Speed. This is considered a "street" seat but the bolstering is very aggressive. It is not very comfortable on the street. The thigh bolsters squeeze you very tightly and there's no give. But on track it is great with a ton of support. I also tried the Sport and Speedster seats which are much more street friendly but didn't have aggressive bolstering and support.

Using Wedge bracket with Recaro slider. 5' 9" with 32 inch waist. It is very tight with me, I don't think I'd fit if I was any wider. Harness holes line up and shoulder support is good. Center harness hole lines up as well if you want to run the crotch strap.

Also, Wedge bracket is not very good... they're custom made and there's inconsistencies. And they have no bracket for e90 so I had to adapt the e92 bracket to work.

[Richbot]

Are there any non-Profi carbon shells WITHOUT wings I'm overlooking that are known fits in the E9x? I'm contemplating doing something extremely stupid

[Obioban]

Originally Posted by Richbot

Are there any non-Profi carbon shells WITHOUT wings I'm overlooking that are known fits in the E9x? I'm contemplating doing something extremely stupid

You can get the Nogaro in CF, though it's $$$.

Mine (which are GRP): https://f87.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1520675

[Obioban]

Because I'm running my seat on the stock BMW slider, I still use the factory seat belt mount point-- both for the factory 3 point receiver and for my 6 point.

Bonus: it stays properly located to the seat, regardless of seat position, because it's on the slider (which aftermarket sliders aren't strong enough to do):



And I retain pretensioner functionality:

[Richbot]

Originally Posted by Obioban

You can get the Nogaro in CF, though it's $$$.

Mine (which are GRP): https://f87.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1520675

Holy crap I had no idea Cobra offered this much in the way of OEM+ support. The heaters and factory upholstery/belt routing were my #1 reason to stay away from buckets and why I thought I was stuck with the Sportster as my only real option (not that that's such a bad beat, but they're heavy). AND you can have them without the harness holes, which would be extremely poseur in my 99% street-driven car. Dude. Thanks

[macdude357]

I finally got my Cobra Nogaro's installed in my E90. The install should have been fairly straight forward, however, turns out there are a few different permutations of the seats and mine were slightly different than the ones Brey-Krause used to make the original mounts. Fortunately, BK had figured this out and had already made a change to the design so they shipped me out a new set.

To answer Candide13 question from the Chit-chat thread, yes, they fit:



The parts I used were:

Seat mounts for OEM Sliders

Sub-strap

Lapbelt mount (More on this later in the post)

These switches from Amazon instead of the expensive OEM originals

Regarding the lap belt mount, BK had recommended the R-9287 part which is supposed to bolt in between the slider and the floor. I had bought one but the mounting hole didn't line up with my sliders. I had also purchased the lap belt mount linked above as a back up plan and it turns out, it's a better solution because it mounts on top of the slider so it slides with the slider. Here's a closeup pic:



You can see that it has a hole for the shoulder/lap belt to attach as well as a loop for your harness lap belt. The drawback is that you may have to drill a hole in your slider to mount it (some sliders have both holes already but mine only had one).

Now on to the "what I wish I had known prior to starting this project section".

The biggest obstacle I had to overcome was that the mounts, mount on the outside of the sliders. This doesn't seem like a big deal except that means that the rear torx bolt has to now go on the inside which puts the nut on the outside. For the outboard side of the seat that's not a big deal; however for the inboard side it is. The inboard bracket has a 90 degree bend in it. That makes it impossible to get a wrench in there to tighten the thin 19mm nut as shown here (see the nut in the yellow circle):



What I had to do was to also remove the lap belt receptacle bracket (yellow arrow). One of the bolts holding that down is shown in the red circle (like the slider bolts, they are installed with red loctite so they required quite a bit of torque to remove). That bolt happens to sit under the edge of the mount. It also has a square nut that is inside the slider and is difficult to line back up with the bolt when putting it back together. The other issue with that setup is that the black spacer that comes with the mounts is too thin and results in the nut bottoming out before it's snug on the mount. I ended up buying some 10.9 m12 washers and found that two of those in place of the black spacer was just right.

In order to put it all together, I had to put the 19mm nut on the torx bolt and tighten it hand tight. I then rotated the mount up about 75 degrees. That gives you enough clearance to fit a socket over the 19mm nut. I then tightened it down the 19mm nut all the way, put the lap belt receptacle bracket back in, put the torx bolt shown circled in red in and then lowered the mount down on top of it, finally putting in the front torx bolt and nut and tightened it all down. I then inserted a pen through the hole on the bottom of the slider to hold the square nut up against the torx bolt holding the lap belt mount and tightened that down. The other torx bold and square nut holding down the lap belt mount is easy to access so long as the slider is slide far enough back. Of course, all these bolts need loctite so you need work fairly quickly to get things done before the loctite sets.

Some other things that fall into the "wish I had known" category are to make sure you raise the seat all the way before removing it. That will make it very easy to access the 19mm thin nut.

Regarding the switches used for the slider, the little bulbs you have to remove are glass so be careful (I crushed one, getting bits of glass all over the place). The easiest way to remove the bulbs (after you opened up the switches), is to grab the plastic base to remove the bulb/base assembly, then use a needle nose pliers to gently pull the bulbs up and out. I went the extra mile and put shrink wrap on all the wires that fit onto the switch to avoid any shorts.

I also found that none of the wires from the stock seat were really long enough to go from the motor and yellow plug, to the switch. I ended up having to splice some wire together. I originally bought one of those cheap soldering irons off Amazon but, even though it was 100w, it would not heat the wire up hot enough to melt the solder. I ended up buying a Weller 140w soldering gun from Home Depot that did the job.

For the sub-strap mounts, you have to screw the inner bolt in until only a few mm is sticking out from the jam nut in order for it to fit properly. Make sure the sub-strap mounts don't push the seat mounts outward or that could cause the sliders to twist making it very hard to line up the holes to the floor.

Also not mentioned in the mount instructions is that the silver space replaces the plastic one from the front of the seat sliders (the black one is supposed to replace the thin black washer in the rear, but as I mentioned above, I found that two m12 washers were a better fit).

The first seat took me a very long time to install (mostly because of the differences in my sliders as mentioned above). I was able to get the second seat installed over two evenings, so much quicker.

My initial impressions of the seats are that they are very comfortable. The ride height isn't much lower than stock (I'm only 5' 7" so I didn't want to end up being too low in the car). I used the top hole in the front and the second from top in the back. That results in a seating position that works well with my helmet but means there's space between the back of my head and the seat when I'm not wearing my helmet. I might get a pad to put over the top of the seat to prevent my head from snapping back in case someone rear ends me. The seats seem very snug and supportive.

Can't wait for my next track day to see how they feel!

[Obioban]

The black with the contrasting stitching looks so good! You're making me regret a bit not getting contrasting stitching :P

I suspect you'll love them on track. Harnessed in, with the Nogaros, I no longer think at all about keeping myself in place-- just drive the car. Ridiculous improvement!

... FYI I suspect your sub straps are installed backwards, from the first pic...

[Richbot]

If I were to buy these without belt cutouts and didn't bother with mounting a 5-point, do these minor fit issues go bye-bye?

Did you do heat?

[macdude357]

Originally Posted by Richbot

If I were to buy these without belt cutouts and didn't bother with mounting a 5-point, do these minor fit issues go bye-bye?

Did you do heat?

None of the issues were related to the fact I got the seats with the harness slots.

I don't use heated seats. Not really needed living in San Diego.

[macdude357]

Originally Posted by Obioban

... FYI I suspect your sub straps are installed backwards, from the first pic...

I knew I should have double checked that; you are probably right.

[macdude357]

Just to follow up on my Cobra Nogaro seats. Had my first track day with them the other day at Big Willow. The seats were very comfortable on the 3 hour drive to the track. At the track, I really liked how they held me in place. I would definitely recommend these to anyone that wants a streetable track setup.

[Obioban]

Originally Posted by macdude357

Just to follow up on my Cobra Nogaro seats. Had my first track day with them the other day at Big Willow. The seats were very comfortable on the 3 hour drive to the track. At the track, I really liked how they held me in place. I would definitely recommend these to anyone that wants a streetable track setup.

100% agreed!

[turbo_joe]

Finally swapped my passenger seat out to match my driver seat (pass seat was a Sparco Evo II)