Exactly right, no worries Cliff. To give you an idea just how low.....the bottom of the seat in the rear on its lowest setting with the ultra low side mounts is literally 1-2cm above the adapter place. It is LOW!

Heard from the owner, they did mess up and forgot to send me an additional two risers that have the holes for the lower belt. Yours are built in on the side of the mount whereas on the ultra low they need to be added. They are priority shipping the missing pieces. I also just spoke with the owner Mark who spent a good 20 mins listening to the situation, and walking through possible solutions. In the end there were two solutions that will not involve any cutting and should work:

1) Slide seat forward and remove 2 bolts that attach sliders to the seat from underneath. Slide seat backwards and remove bolts that connect sliders to the seat in the rear. This will be extremely tight given how low my seat is, but his technician ensures it can be done.

If that does not work

2) Remove 2 side bolts between side mounts and seat. Loosen side bolt in rear that is accessible (door side) and then tilt the seat back carefully to allow access to the front.

 

We are hard back on Rev 2 of our submarine sub-frame. This time we built it completely to the car not the seat. After several iterations we finally used temporary spreaders on the bench to hold the hole locations of the supplied seat frames to the desired width needed to bolt them into the car. This allowed us to build the sub-frame on the bench to the proper dimension. This afternoon it finally dropped right in and bolted down easily. It seems all we have to do is triangulate it and the mechanical part of the seat installation will be finished. Nice it is now a single assembly that can be easily installed and removed.

Note - the Schroth ring on the tunnel side must be straightened some. There is not enough clearance between the tunnel and the seat frame to run so much twist.



SRF Notes: Got to run the SRF for two days. I ran a 1.31:4 the second day. Another personal best by a second and I had fastest lap for Gen 1. I told the Gen 3 guy's there was no way I was going to back out of it when they caught me. I would hold my line and it was on them to get it done. I held them off twice at turn 1 which put them taking me at turn 4. This let me chase them thru 4,5,6, and 7 which I could do. Once we turned on to the straight at 7 it was adios. Those frigging things are so much quicker ( -100lbs + 25 hp = 11 lbs/hp vs 15 for Gen1).

It was very wet the second morning. A bunch of young guns in group 1 and I think everyone of them went off. A Gen 3 went into the wall in the braking zone at 10 which required some repair - ouch. I tested it when we went out and the rear stepped out immediately (very, very, wet).

I was in shock when an instructor said none of us was carrying enough speed thru turn 4 - "are you f3g serious?" . Turns out he was correct, but it took some inner digging to try it . By the end I was running 4 and 5 at full throttle in 3rd and 10 and 11 full throttle in 4th. A very strange experience the first time you do it.

I have completed 600 miles with lessons. The coaching is fantastic - the faster you go, the faster they want you to go

Going to run again in July.

chr

 

Eric - you back on track?

chr

 

Cliff-After they sent me the missing pieces I have since installed the driver seat. The passenger seat is still stuck with the rounded off bolt and no way to attach the seatbelt to the bottom. I am taking the car in on Monday to a high-end body shop that I trust to see if they have any ideas.

I must say that I’m very happy with the look and feel of the new seat. I am 6-3” and wanted to sit low. With the low rise set up it’s actually almost too low for even me. My butt is literally 2 inches from the floor pan!

 

I'm out of town, but I do have an idea for that bolt. I'll post up a picture on Monday.

chr

 

I will be waiting in eager anticipation!

 

It will be some work, but pretty sure you can get it. An air grinder will get under.



Bits are on eBAY, Northern Tool, Harbor, etc etc.



Offered as a last resort.

chr

 

My reply did not go through last night. The last resort was actually taken yesterday afternoon! I took the car to a high end body shop I trust and after grinding a slit in the head and trying to remove with a flathead on a ratchet to no avail, they began grinding with the same bits pictured with an air tool. No joke it took 2 hours before they were able to loosen up as they had to drill down below the head and around the sides. Made a terrible mess but the seat is finally out!!

Appreciate all of the help and guidance from this forum.

Not a sound you want to hear in your Aston Martin:

 

Rev 2 built to the chassis.


Feel good about strength, not particularly lite. We may drill some holes to get a little out of it.


Here you get the idea how narrow the seat is. Maybe 5/8' to 1' of total gap between both sides. With the sub-frame built to the car, we bolted the seat to the frame assembly and let the side rails take up the error. The dimensions of the assembly to the chassis remained unaltered . We have six connections for assembly to chassis, six connections for sub-frame to seat frame, and four connections for seat to seat frame.


It went in and we were able to thread the bolts by hand. I sat in it and it is too far back for my size - 5'6. If you are short, you need to install the risers with the double holes at the back. If you are tall, install the risers with the double holes to the front (the slides are shorter than the risers). We are hoping between flipping the risers and rotating the seat down I will fit. If not we will need to fabricate new risers which will allow us to move the slides forward. Looks like there is a good 2.5 inches if we need it. We'll get an inch flipping the risers. Wish we had pedal adjustment.

With the seat full forward you will not be able to work on the battery so we have elected not to install the slides on the passenger side. That one will be fixed. The seat feels fantastic. It fits my size very well and I am really looking forward to driving with it. Poor Mike he is really going to be jammed in there (genetics can be a cruel thing).



Rick F - I meant to mention - I have been seriously messing with trail braking. I have read about it for ever and last time out I stumbled into it. What a tool, I was actually able to change the direction of the car after brakes off turn in with just a little pressure - a strange interaction between steering, throttle, and brake. If I turned in and the car was late to apex, I could quickly back out, apply very small brake and the car would further rotate and line right up. It all happens so fast - what a feeling. It completely changes the dynamic of interacting with the car. It immediately dropped my lap times.

Randy Pobst said something to the effect "You are not a race car driver, your are a weight manager"

chr

 

 

We finally got all of the holes drilled and the bar mounted.




We mocked up where the new bar needed to go. The Cobra Seat just does not fit this bar configuration. I have almost given up several times but so far everything is still fitting. We installed 1 " spacers under the feet to raise the bar. This allowed the Seat to slide back far enough for Mike to be able to drive. Raising the hoop requires either raising the stays or rotating them down. We opted to raise them. This negated being able to bore holes thru the back panel so we opted to window the rear panel.


Since we opted to raise the stays we cut off the original feet and welded on new ones. In the picture below you see the stepped joint and the fastener in the joint. The rear panel has molded in stiffeners that also hold the panel off the rear bulkhead.



We wanted the new feet to be co-planar with the panel. That required 3/8 thickness. With that thickness we were able to machine a step into the backside of the foot so that it cleanly overlapped the joint. We bored a relief on the back side of the foot to fit over the fastener.


Passenger Side


After a lot of configuration choices we opted to add a 2nd horizontal bar and weld a plate between the two. We will install eye bolts into the plate which the belts will clip into.

Here is our mock up with a plastic dummy plate.


Back side view

 

Here you can see the standoffs on the back of the OEM PANEL




Pretty f3g committed


Finished my 4th racing school in a Spec Racer last week. At 61 I will be running my 1st race in mid September. Cannot believe it took me 45 years to get it done.

chr

 

We are finally buttoning up the installation of the B hoop. I don't know how many times we fitted and refitted ( I am thinking no less than 50 times in and out), but the interior panels have been reinstalled. All of the interior panels were corrected as needed i.e. re-stretch leather, re-fasten carpet, repair panel tabs, replace fir trees, etc. I thought for sure the interior would not go back in cleanly and with no interference, but miraculously it has.

There is a problem, actually two, but we'll start with this one. Some months ago during the installation the car was started while the seats were un-plugged. I was pretty sure this was going to cause a problem and now I need to verify.

We installed the seat belt and air bag resistors this week and I finally got to test yesterday. When I started the car (yesterday) to check the electronics I got the "SRS Airbag Service Urgent" and the red triangle on the dash. My problem is I don't know if starting it with seats unplugged caused this or if I have some other issue. Can anyone definitively speak to starting with the seats unplugged and if doing so would trip this error?

I spent a little time researching it last night and if I understand this is not something we can clear - is this correct?

chr

 

I' m dont recall 100% for sure, but I also did start once with the seat airbag unplugged, and got a warning message.
However, after plugging the seat airbag again, the message dissapeared at the next start.
So there is hope...

Good that the rollbar exercise is coming to an end - I'm sure the finished product will look good!

Thomas

 

Bump - edited message above with actual error message

x-chr