Chunky Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 (edited) Hey guys! I just wanted to share my experience with fitting Recaro seats in my 71 Z. I have 2 sets of seats for the car. First set is a pair of the ebay fake-aro sidemount buckets. The second set is a pair of LX reclining, old school style. Starting with the stock seats, I replaced the driver side with a fake-aro leaving a stock passenger side. I then installed the passenger side, leaving me with fake-aro driver and LX passenger. That's what I'm basing my comparison on. I never had both fakes or LX installed at the same time at the time of this post. I will do the driver side later though, too tired from the heat and twisting my body in ways I didn't know possible. Relative to the stock seat placement and height: (I'm about 5'9" 164-ish pounds)... Comparing fake-aro driver with stock passenger; The fake-aro's sit about even with stock. I have them side mounted to universal sliders then the sliders are bolted straight to the attachment points for the seat. I used some flat pieces of steel to get them situated. Sitting in the seat was nice, it was like a glove. Unfortunately there was some flexing. I'm thinking that was due to the nature of ebay specials. I didn't feel comfortable driving around like that although I did sometimes feel like a race car driver. Driving with them, I felt that they sat about even the stock seats. I didn't feel like I was much lower or higher than before. The shoulder bolsters are very prominent on this seat, they sit very close to the door jams although they don't interfere with the doors at all. The LX seats; I have them mounted to a set of Recaro non-tab sliders (which you must use due to the weird 6 bolt pattern) which are then bolted to Planted seat bases. Overall they sit very close in height to the fake-aro seats. From the top of the headrest is about ~4 inches to the headliner. Def enough room for me. I'm able to slide the seats all the way forward and back. The bolts I used are short enough that they don't interfere with each other inside the slider. The round reclining spin handles fit fine on both sides and are functional from either side, although the side against the trans tunnel is a little tight but it doesn't interfere. I can even recline them all the way back until the back of the seat is really close to the "ledge" where the compartments are. The sides clear the door jams just fine. The passenger seat was a night and day difference in comfort and stability compared to my stock seat, of course my stock seats were pretty worn out as well so take that into account. I'm hoping the driver side will produce similar results. Recaro LX bottom mounts + Planted seat bases w/ recaro sliders do not sit overly high, which was my fear going into this. I was worried that the seats would sit so high that I would feel like I was 4 wheeling. That is not the case. This isn't a seat review so I may not be very in depth, I just wanted to document my experiences installing the seats in case somebody's interested in doing a similar setup and is looking for info. I kept all the little baggies for the nuts and bolts so I'll post up a list later. I can't wait to get the passenger side in and take it for a spin. Sorry no pics yet, I literally just got done. I wanted to type this up while it was still fresh in my head. After I get the driver side in I'll post up results from that experience as well, either tomorrow night or Thursday. One question... I used home depot bolts, would that cause a problem? I hit up the grade 8 section. ======== Washers, Nuts & Bolts Recaro slider -> seat: - m6 (x1.00) cap screw, socket, plain steel, 16mm. (x6 per seat) 20mm will also work. Can probably sub for shorter as well but 16mm looked like a good length to me at time. My seats had the pattern with 2 bolts up front and 1 bolt in the rear. I read somewhere that some seats use only 4 bolts and for those use m8. (confirm?) - m6 lock washers. Not sure if needed but it sounded like a good idea at the time. recaro slider -> planted bracket/base: - m8 (x1.25) cap screw, socket, plain steel, 16mm. (4 per seat) - m8 (x1.25) socket cap screw, plain steel, 16mm. The combination of cap screws enables the mounting bolts inside the slider to move without interfering with each other. Seat base -> car: -m10 (x1.25) flange bolts. Zinc plated (4 per seat) On my car these size bolts fit the holes in the original seat mounts perfectly. Although the length was a little off. I used 30mm for the front and 25mm length for the rear, because I purchased 30's originally. To keep it simple shorter bolts can probably be used all around. -m10 (x1.25) flange nuts, Zinc plated. -m10 lock washers. The cap screws are the most important. But for the flange bolts regular style bolts can be used. The main reason I liked the flange bolts is they had serrations on the underside of the head to help grip the mounting surfaces. I don't think it really helps that much, but it sounded like a good idea at the time. If you see something wrong, please please please speak up. I'm not an expert, just sharing my experience. I'm open to learning if I've made a mistake. (Will post pics tomorrow after driver side install in the next day or so) Edit: Added nuts & bolts list. Edited June 25, 2014 by Chunky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m1ghtymaxXx Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 (edited) Pics? I recently installed a set of used Chinese Recaro lookalikes (the fake Nismo ones) as they were cheap, looked decent, and and in better shape than the torn stocks seats. I figured Chinese seats couldn't be any less safe then the 37 year old stock seats...boy was I wrong! The driver's seat flexed like a wet noodle, and one of the bolsters was flopping around. I stripped it to the bare frame to investigate and found the bottom "rail" was broken in half between the floor mount and the reclining mechanism, as any stress on the seat back is concentrated in this area, and the tubing and welds were of horrendous quality. I then picked up some 1/2" x 1/8" flat bar to reinforce the main rails, and added beads around "crossbars" and floor mounts. I found it was worth the time to strip the passenger seat down in order to build slider addapters, upon doing so I found that someone had already tried to repair cracks in the frame with flux-core booger welds. I went over the passenger side the same way I did the driver's side and I'm happy with them for now, though I will be keeping an eye out for some quality racing buckets. In terms of fitment, they sit maybe a 1/2" higher than stock, and the driver's side is offset about 1/2" to the left of the steering wheel thanks to the 280Z cat hump, though I don't really notice when driving, for all I know the stock seat was the same. My DIY adapters are slotted for side to side adjustment, so I can sort it out once I gather the courage to take a hammer to my trans tunnel. Edited July 3, 2014 by m1ghtymaxXx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chunky Posted June 27, 2014 Author Share Posted June 27, 2014 I got the driver side installed Wednesday evening. I did notice that with the driver side there is a hump in the trans tunnel that the reclining knob will not clear. I had to remove the inside knob, but it's fine because the other side knob is still present and it works just fine. Sitting in it with a steering wheel as reference, I had a better feel for it all. It sits a little bit higher compared to the fake-aro seat, but not enough to say that it's "too high", at least not for me. Over all I like it! The seats with the center console as reference, hopefully that will help show how high the seat sits. From a lower perspective to compare the seat to the door jams. (pls excuse the surface crud) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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