For the longest time, Garage Woolery has had a problem with the stock Miata seats that were in the Pitcrew Roadster. They were relatively heavy and didn’t offer the right kind of support. Although we had performed the well known stock seat modification known as “the foamectomy” to lower the driver position in the car, we knew there was room for improvement (literally).
Although there are lots of other aftermarket seats available on the market, all of them suffered from one or more problems: They were either too narrow (we couldn’t fit in them because we’re too fat), or they raised the driver position too high (and we were too tall), or the seat itself was too wide to fit into the Pitcrew Roadster.
The answer was found in the form of the Lotus Elise seat. It is very lightweight, allows for lowered seating position, and is narrow enough to fit into the Pitcrew Roadster!
Although the Elise seat is great, it wasn’t quite perfect for our needs as the side thigh supports would cut into the back of our thighs a little bit. This was corrected by cutting the supports down to about half their normal height.
After that, the only issue left was to fabricate brackets to mount the seat. Garage Woolery got in touch with Rob (aka Ryokurob) from Clubroadster.net to solve this problem. Rob fabricated a custom bracket that would fit perfectly into the Pitcrew Roadster:
Note that the bracket is asymetrical. This allows it to take full advantage of the space that is available in the Pitcrew Roadster for mounting the seat.
For simplicity’s sake, we planned the seat to be nonadjustable. Note that there are no adjustment holes in the bracket.
The bracket just about falls into place in the Pitcrew Roadster’s cockpit. All the mounting holes lined right up! And here’s the result after mounting the seat:
Notice how low and how far back the seat sits in the car. After the seat was installed, our 6’1″, 250lb. driver was able to sit in the Pitcrew Roadster and fully extend his legs! He also gained ~3″ of headroom, which allows for helmeted driving without worries of the helmet banging against the inside roof of the car or rollbar.
Pretty awesome setup, David! Did you pound out the tranny tunnel at all?
Nope, the tranny tunnell was left completely unmodified.
“This was corrected by cutting the supports down to about half their normal height.”
Could you elaborate on exactly what you did here? I’m looking for some Elise seats for my NB Miata right now, but I don’t know what the hardware on the bottom of the Elise seat looks like. Any welding involved in this modification after the cutting ?
The seat bolsters were cut down, not any of the mounting points or hardware. I cut the seat bolsters down a bit so they wouldn’t dig into the back of my thighs…just some cutting of fiberglass. This modification wouldn’t have anything to do with seat fitment or mounting, so you should be able to mount the seats without problems.
Thanks for the clarification.