Thanks to all with the helpful advice about Miata seats in a spitfire. I
finally got
them installed last weekend and I wanted to share my impressions in case
anyone
else was considered the swap.
First of all, this has to be one of the most annoying jobs to perform, I
thought it
was much worse than doing, say, a clutch. Assemble the seat, install it,
check fit,
remove it, dissemble it, modify it, reassemble and install. Repeat to
taste. Argh. If
you install the front mounting bolts first, you cant slide the seat far
enough forward
to get to the back ones. If you install the back mounting bolts first, you
cant slide
the seat far enough backwards to get to the front bolts.
Enough carping. I had gone the route of removing foam from the seat
cushion,
but not the seatback. I had removed as much as I dared and height doesnt
seem to be a problem. More of a problem is that the seat wont move back
far enough
and I have to drive with legs splayed around the steering wheel and with my
arms bent
as Im too close to the wheel. When I first sat in the car, I HATED it.
But I thought
I should at least give it a chance and drove the car to work yesterday 50
miles each way.
Now I have mixed feelings; since the seat is far more comfortable to butt
and back, but
worse on arms and ankle.
Im trying to figure out a way to further modify the seat pan so that it can
move further
back. For those who havent messed around with Miata seats, the problem is
that
the spitfire center tunnel flares out towards the back of the floor plan to
accommodate
the frame. The bottom of the Miata seat is a metal pan containing the seat
cushion and
the pan is too wide to fit once the tunnel starts flaring. I obviously
cant (or wont)
modify the spitfire body shell and the seat pan is also going to be very
challenging to
change. The problem is that right where you need to remove metal is where
the
mounting bracket for the seat back is. I tried grinding as much metal off
of it as I dared,
but it made very little difference. About the only things that I can think
to do is
re-engineer the mounting point, perhaps a custom bracket to mount it
somewhere else
or cut the seat in half, remove metal from the middle and weld it back
together. The first
option is probably beyond my skill (and tool) level and the second, well is
too, as well as
giving up some width that my backside really needs.
So at best, my recommendation for Miata seats is lukewarm at best.
Thanks again for all the support!
Greg
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