RX7 FD (Series 6/7/8) Seats installed in 2nd gen S30

[garvice]

For those of you that don't want to be bored with my ramblings, here is the result.

 

For the rest of you that actually want to see what I had to do to get them to fit, read on.

 

After seeing these two threads, I was impressed with how original the RX7 FD seats looked in the S30 interior. They also are far more supportive and I believe lighter then the original seats (I didn’t measure so can’t confirm). One other big reason why I decided to do this conversion was that in the two threads shown both owners had mentioned how easy the swap was.

 

http://www.classiczcars.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23226

http://www.viczcar.com/forum/index.php?topic=1180.0

 

Unfortunately I discovered that my 76 (Nov 2+2 build) had different floor mounts to the two guys that have done this conversion. This is how the early floor mounts look (after some massaging of the rear mount).

 

This is how my 76 seat mounts look like.

 

Notice how high the mounts are at the front. The existing seat mounts are only 1mm folded steel with another sheet of steel welded behind the nut for strength and spot welded to the floor. They are extremely strong for such thin metal.

 

What I found was that I could get the RX7 seats to line up nicely with the original seat mounts. Unfortunately I found that the RX7 seats were sitting far too high at the front. My small aftermarket momo steering wheel was touching my legs. I found that the datsun seats have the seat cushion parallel with the seat rails and use the seat mounts to tilt the seat cushion. The RX7 seats have the seat cushion tilted to the rails already. So when you put the seats on the standard datsun mounts you are almost reclining and your knees point very high up. The diagram below explains what I am talking about.

 

I also discovered that the M8 bolts used in the datsun were a little too small for the holes in the RX7 rails. I ended up using M12 bolts.

 

So, after finding this out, I decided that I would have to lower my seat mounts. If I remember correctly they were approximately 110mm (~4 1/4 inches) high at the front and 50mm at the rear. My first decision was to cut the mount in half, drop it over the existing mount and weld in some new 6mm sections for where the rails go.

 

I decided to start with the passengers side (rhd car) mount so that I could still drive the car and also because the transmission tunnel stuck out further (required a little massaging with ball pein hammer) on this side so it was a more difficult fit.

 

It took some courage to cut into the precious metal for the first time.

 

Here is the top half of the mount positioned over the bottom half of the mount.

 

This was my original design

 

I had my mate weld up the seat mount. He wasn’t real happy with his efforts as he found the thin metal hard to get a good weld on without blowing holes through it.

 

This was how it turned out. Not bad, but I we both though we could do better.

 

So, I undid all my mates good effort and decided to rip the entire mount out. The new seat mount I made out of 40x40x2.5mm shs with some of the 6mm bar as spacers for height. I also used some of this shs for the rear mounts as the RX7 rails are longer.

 

With these mounts I was able to get the seats to sit like the originals and even a little lower.

 

Next was the drivers side. No driving the car now.

 

The drivers side has a support sticking up through the floor pan so I had to come up with a new way to mount the left front tab.

 

Here is a picture of my mounts after my mate welded in the nuts and spacers. I cleaned the welds up a bit and gave them a good coat of “Bright Zincâ€.

Passenger's side

 

Driver's side

 

Passenger’s Side Stitch welded in place (With even more “Bright Zinc†applied after)

 

Driver’s Side Stitch welded in place

 

Next photos are after the gaps had been sikaflexed and sprayed with some “Black Zinc†(Didn’t even know there was such a product, 98.5% zinc!)

Passenger's Side

 

Driver’s Side

 

And Finally, the reason why I did it in the first place.

 

I still have to change a few things. Once I get the back rest to my prefered angle, I am going to take out the first few positions, as there is about 5-6 tilted positions that I won't use at the front.

 

I also have to work out a way to change the tilting mechanism. Because I have sat the seats so low, my tilting lever is level with the door sill, so I can't easily get my fingers between the lever and the door.

 

Oh yeah, my mate would be ~ 6 foot tall and he still had a good 5 inches above his head.

 

I have heaps more in progress shots if you need to see anything in-particular.

[240hoke]

Nice work, those seats looks really nice in the car...much like the originals but updated.

[garvice]

Thanks Austin.

Means a lot coming from you.

 

Cheers

[bart628]

Wow that looks really good. The seats look like they belong with the car.

[Twentyfourouncer]

Very nice!

[Turbo7MN]

Nicely done!

 

If only FD seats were easier/cheaper to find... I'm probably gonna end up doing FC Turbo II seats in mine. Excellent choice though... those are very comfortable and supportive seats!

[The love of JDM]

Nice work, looks good in car

[garvice]

Nicely done!

Nice work, looks good in car

Cheers guys.

[slownrusty]

Wow beautiful..you got me thinking..hmmmm!

Checking eBay right now for a set.

Yasin