How to Install Racing Seats

hey guys chrisfix here and today I'm going to show you how to replace these old worn-out non-supportive stock seats with these brand new aftermarket racing seats and there's a couple very important reasons on why you might want to upgrade to bucket racing seats like these the first and probably most important reason is for all the extra side support the stock seats on this car have very little side support and I do take this car to the track and check out how much I move in this seat this is one of the first things I noticed and I was really fighting to stay in my seat rather than focusing on driving so with these racing seats you have tons of lateral support look at these extra wide shoulder bolsters to keep you planted at the top of your seat and then these are deep bucket seats so you have a lot of support on the sides here as well and as you can see I have a six point harness set up racing seats have these pastures which allows you to install a harness which is going to really hold you in nice and tight and that brings me to my second reason why which is safety not only are we going to be able to run a full six point harness but these racing seats are FIA rated and they're a single piece design which makes them extra sturdy and extra safe in case of an accident it also makes them extra light which is our third reason so I have a scale here I'm going to weigh the stock seats that are in the car right now and we'll see how much they weigh and I'm going to weigh these seats and we're going to check out the difference for some weight savings and then speaking of the stock seats the final reason is these stock seats have seen better days they're uncomfortable you can see the metal sticking out here the foams all messed up and they just don't look good so these new racing seats are going to look way better and they're going to be a lot more comfortable for when were driving and those are the main reasons why I got racing seats and if you want to get your own racing seats I have an entire video where I took you guys along with me into the store and showed you all the different types of racing seats that you could get as well as the process of measuring yourself to make sure the seat fits you properly and to make sure the seat fits in your car properly and if you haven't seen that video I'll link it in the description so you can check it out but this video right now is how to install racing seats using these brackets we're going to get these seats in that car and as you guys know I like to take things to the next level and I like to go above and beyond I don't know if you've noticed but I remove this black plastic trim from around the edges of the harness pass through because I have a really cool idea that I've been wanting to do so bad since I got these seats so what I did is I went out and I bought this really high-quality suede material and I took this to the embroidery shop and I had them embroider my logo into the suede actually into two pieces of suede and I already spoke with an upholstery shop and what we're going to do is see this white outline here we're going to keep that white outline and the upholstery shop is going to sew in another white line so that this matches perfectly and looks awesome on these seats that is going to be so cool I cannot wait but in order to do this what I need to do now is remove this seat cover the seat cover actually comes off and I'm going to show you how so let's get to it and the idea is to go from this to this first let's remove all this padding which comes out very simply just velcro's in one last piece up here good next we're going to want to take the seat light on its back and right down here we have a spring-loaded metal wire holding the seat cover tight around the seat so just take a pliers and remove one wire from the spring to unload the tension now we could peel back the cover but the harness pass-through at the bottom here is holding the seat cover in so we want to carefully pull the cover out and around from under the plastic trim so we don't rip it just like that beautiful and we'll do the same thing for the other side good now let's move to the top of the seat so in order to get these out unfortunately you have to snap them open and you have to break them because they're glued together but that's okay because I got brand new ones that we could reinstall after we break these you just got to be very careful not to damage any of the material when you break these open to break these open I'm using a thin flat head screwdriver to pry apart the plastic just enough so I could get a thicker pry tool in there which will give me more leverage I'm just working around the perimeter of the plastic removing as much material as I can and as carefully as possible I don't want to rip these seats okay so it looks like I could just pull it apart perfect that's one down now we need to do the same exact thing to the other side and now the cover should just pull right off beautiful okay let's go get my logo sewed on and with a little bit of editing magic I am back from the upholstery shop and check this out oh man I am so excited holy smokes look at that that looks so good I cannot wait to get this installed on the seat so let's go do that now so I already got to set up perfectly on that seat I'm going to show you how to do it on this see it's really simple it's the reverse of what we just did let's focus on the bottom part right here first because we don't want to break this plastic trim here first stretch the cover over the plastic trim and tuck the material under the whole trim piece just like that do the other side as well making sure you tuck all the material under the plastic trim next we could cover the top part of the seat by stretching the cover over the seat bolster then the headrest and then the other seat bolster now we could install the new plastic trim for the harness pass-throughs and that will fit in right here just like that and once you get the front plastic piece in place then just push the rear plastic piece so that they snap together and I'm not going to be gluing these because they seem to snap together really tight and they aren't coming apart good so now we need to reattach the metal cable at the bottom and a little trick is to use a screwdriver and slide the spring and the wire loop over it then turn the screwdriver using that leverage so they'll come together easily next pull the screwdriver out and wallah it's attached remember to add this little cover otherwise the metal spring will vibrate against the seat and drive you crazy and the final step is adding the foam padding which is velcro's into place and with that the seats are completely done man check them out they look so good this is definitely something I'm glad I did and in total it cost me a hundred dollars to do both seats so $50 a seat not bad totally worth it I am loving this now you won't know whether seats will look really good inside my car so let's go do that and in order to do that we need to remove the stock seats removing seats is easy there are only four fasteners holding this in two in the back two on the front so slide the seat backwards which gives us access to the front fasteners get that socket on there loosen it up and that's one and that's the other now we could work on loosening up the back two bolts mixing them up and that's one and that's the other so those two bolts out all our fasteners are removed before we take the seed out it's always a good idea to check underneath the seat make sure you don't see any wires even though these aren't power seats sometimes there could be airbag wires or Center wires under the seats in this case I don't see anything so now we could remove the passenger seat and we want to be careful not to damage anything with the metal rails on the bottom of the seat and with that seat out of the way let's go remove the driver's side seat and the driver's seat is the same process using up the front two nuts then the fire extinguisher bracket could be removed slide the seat forward which gives us access to the last two bolts holding the seat in and with those two bolts remove the only difference between the driver seat and that passenger seat we just took out is the driver seat is a power seat so we have to disconnect an electrical connector that being said if your driver's seat or passenger seat has an airbag in the side here it's always a good idea to disconnect your negative terminal on the battery so that the airbags aren't charged up we don't have to worry about that so all we have to do is go under here find the wiring harness right here and disconnect it now say sayonara to the last stock seat this car is ever going to see so with both seats removed chances are under the seats might be a little bit dirty I'm sure these seats haven't been removed since 1998 so now is a good time to vacuum the carpet and maybe even shampoo them I'm using the stiff bristle brush with the carpet cleaner to agitate the stain and then I'm blotting it up with an absorbent paper towel all right that is something real quick and easy that you could do to make your interior look that much nicer I also did the other side as well nothing spectacular because I'm going to be removing the carpets to get to the bare metal underneath so we could weld in a 6-point roll cage so yes the carpets will be removed as well as the rear seats and some other bits and pieces and the idea is we're going to paint the interior paint the roll cage I don't know the color theme yet and with everything removed we're going to have some weight reduction and speaking of weight reduction there's something I've been wanting the test and that is checking the weight of the stock seat and the aftermarket seat and comparing the two to see how much weight savings we get that stock seat is an electric seat and that stock seat is a manual slider seat so we'll also be able to compare those two as well and since the stock seats already have the brackets connected I'll be sure to include the brackets in the aftermarket seat weight now I've been really curious about this I want to know what you guys are thinking how much weight do you think we're going to save with both seats I think we're going to save about 10 pounds of seat so 20 pounds in total so let's find out first up is the driver's side power seat which weighs fifty point four pounds and that's pretty heavy next we have the passenger side manual seat which weighs forty point two pounds now we have our racing seat with no brackets which weighs nineteen point two pounds and finally let's add the brackets which gives us a total of thirty one point two pounds so not bad we're saving about twenty-eight pounds or thirteen kilograms by going from the stock seats to the aftermarket seats and I gotta say these seats do look pretty good on my driveway but where I think they look even better is in my car so let's go grab our bracket and install the racing seats on the driver's side we have the wiring for the stock power seat which we could tuck away under the carpeting next you're going to grab your floor mount bracket now these brackets are pretty Universal they have a bunch of holes on the top but what isn't Universal is how these legs are welded on that's specifically made for my year make and model so it should bolt right in and I say should because sometimes they don't now we want to tighten the two front nuts by hand then we have our rear two bolts which we also want to hand tighten and we'll finish with the last one in the corner and so far so good so we have all four of our fasteners hand tightened down we don't want to tighten them down all the way because we still have to test fit our seats on here to make sure they fit and to do that we have to install the side mounts on our seats so let's go do that now and installing side mounts is easy on the side of the seat there are two holes there's one up here and there's one down here these holes line up with the holes in the side mount you want the slotted holes to be at the front of the seat and then grab a bolt with a washer and just thread it on and the reason why you want the slots in the front is because you want to be able to adjust the front if you want a different seat angle for now I'm going to put this on the second slide and when you tighten these bolts down make sure you don't over tighten them these are getting screwed into fiberglass so just make sure they're snug and with that side mount in now we could go to the other side and install our other side mount same exact process make sure you use washers on the bolts and then tighten them down so that they're snug and with both our side mounts on there let's go test fit it in the car so let's get it in place on the floor bracket good and with the seat in place oh man that is looking awesome we're almost there we just need a test fit it make sure we have it in the right spot right now I have it centered on this bracket so that we could test fit it and I just want to make sure that we could close the door beautiful yeah we have a nice gap there so there's no clearance issues with that now we just need to get in and try it out all right close the door and the first thing I notice is it's a little too far away I can't press the clutch all the way and I can't hit the gas and the brake all the way but that's okay all we have to do is move the seat forward just a little bit let's get in and try it out one more time okay this time I could press the clutch in all the way you could hit the gas floor it hit the brake good first gear good and Hydro good so that's exactly where I want this this feels perfect so what we're going to do now is try to find any holes that are matching between the bracket and the side mount here and we'll slip a bolt through if we look in here yeah there's not going to be any holes here we're going to have to drill on this one check in the other one this we actually might be able to make work beautiful so there's a hole there we won't have to drill there then if we come around the front here that's the last slot into the bracket we're gonna have to drill a hole right about there but we'll make it work so now let's go check the other side same deal back here there's no slot that it's falling into so we're just going to drill a hole so with all the slots and holes in this bracket we only have one that fits right back there all three of these are going to have to get drilled so in order to figure out where we're going to drill I have a bolt and get some paint I'm using a paint marker and get a nice blob of paint on the tip of the bolt then place the bolt where you want it to go the paint's going to transfer to the metal and that will mark the exact spot that you need to drill now we want to be careful and not move the seat at all so that we could do the front one and it's the same exact process use a bolt with a glob of paint on the tip and then just push the bolt to where it's going to go again try to make sure you don't move the seat that way all the holes will line up so now let's remove the seat and see how we did and that works perfectly check it out we got a bolt holes a boat hole there and a bolt hole there that we need to drill so let's get drilling now one thing I noticed with this out of the car right where our hole is supposed to be drilled well there's a leg so if we drill the hole this bolt won't go all the way through so what we're going to do is grab the side mount bracket from the other seat line up our marks and make a new mark over so when we drill we won't hit that leg now we could start drilling and have a few quick tips and tricks for drilling steel that's this thick the first tip is to use cobalt bits because these are designed to drill through steel and you can see I have three different bits I'm going from small to medium to large which is the width of my bolt and I want to start with the small one so we want to drill right there and even though we're using a small drill bit if we just start drilling like this that drill bit is going to move all around and it's going to be hard to get this bit directly into the center so to solve that problem we're using something called a center punch it's a spring-loaded punch you just place this in the center of where you want to drill and push down and it creates a small crater for your drill bit to fit in so it won't skip around we're starting with a small bit then moving to the medium-size bit and then finishing with a large bit which fits our bolt now we could test fit the bolt perfect nice and tight now we're going to follow the same process for the other two holes use the metal punch then drill out each hole and you want to remember to paint the inside of any holes you drill so they won't rust now with all the holes drilled let's mount the seat and this is where we get to see how accurate we were with our drilling we're going to come around back here and to hold the seats in I'm using high-strength metric grade 10.9 bolts and washers which are stronger than the average bowl and I'll safely secure the seat so let's get this first bolt in the hole good now let's do the others and using a needle nose pliers will help you get the bolts into these harder to reach places now let's try the front and that fit and if this last one goes in we are good to go beautiful all the holes were drilled perfectly and the bolts fit in place now I'm going to grab some washers and locking nuts and let's bolt down the seat so we could install it now to tighten these down we want to make sure it doesn't come loose so I'm adding some medium strength thread Locker onto the threads then we're going to grab our washer and then I'm using a nylon locking nut and that dark-blue insert inside the nut is that nylon piece that deforms and grabs onto Red's as you tighten it down so for the other three add some threadlocker then the washer and then tighten down that lock nut good and with that we are so close to finishing so our seat is securely mounted to the bracket now we need to get the seat installed in the car now I'm not going to tighten these bolts just yet because there's one less thing we need to do and that is check the seat belt fitment so our seat belt is right down here and it's encased in this hard plastic which isn't going to work it has to come over and then pass through right down here so we're going to have to remove the plastic on the seat belt the other thing is our seat belt on this side is going to have to go through the pass-through instead of going around the top like this and for the same seat belt down at the bottom we're going to want it to go through this pass-through as well so we're going to have to unbolt it from back here and feed it through so let's remove the seat one last time and we're going to work on this part of the seat belt first you can see it's encased in this hard plastic which doesn't allow it to bend under this plastic is going to be a material just like a normal seat belt so we want to remove that plastic and expose that material the seat belt bolts use 8050 Torx to unscrew the bolts and once it's unscrewed we could remove the seat belt well not all the way because we have this wire here which lets the car know that your seat belts on so we're gonna have to work with this inside the car and what we want to do is we want to cut this plastic cover off and you want to be very careful not to cut the seat belt in here if you cut the seat belt if you even Knick it a little bit the seat belt is garbage so be very careful and we'll start from the top here and work our way all the way down the seat belt cutting this plastic open now we have our seat belt free to bend so let's bolt it back in now get up and then torque it down to factory spec which for this car is 40 foot pounds alright now with that torque into place that is done now let's remove the bottom part of this seat belt this is also a t-50 Torx and with this removed now we can install our seat with the seat in place we could grab the seat belt and run it through the top pass through then bring it down here and run it through the bottom pass through and then bolt it back up into place so snug this up and then torque it down to 40 foot pounds and with that tightened down let me show you how the belt is getting run so it's getting run from the top here through the harness pass-through at the top through the harness pastor at the bottom and then it's going to go over and connect just like that this is laying on your shoulder and this is laying on your lap not against the seat so you're going to be securely in your seat that's how you run a three-point seatbelt with your racing seat just as a little teaser I have a full six point harness ready to get installed but you can't safely run a harness without a roll cage but don't worry I will have a video on how to properly install a harness and roll cage but for now we have the stock three-point seatbelt safely set up so we could use it and it's still going to work really well to keep me tight in the seat and now we have one last thing that we need to do and that is tighten down the bolt first can't forget about our fire extinguisher mount then grab the two nuts and get them on the studs and it's very important to torque down the people so they don't loosen up and finally add the fire extinguisher and clamp it in there so it's secure now all we have left is the back two bolts and we're done now a little top tip something I've been doing that's been really helpful is I've been putting the size of the bolt right on the bolt head so this is a 15 millimeter bolt that way I know to grab my 15 millimeter wrench and since there's a pretty steep angle to get in there instead of using a regular ratcheting wrench I'm using a swiveling ratcheting wrench and with all four of those bolts tightened down there's just one more thing I want to do right here when you're getting in and out of the car it's really easy to see the side mount bolts so for a quick reference see if the bolts are coming undone I like to get a paint marker and just draw a little line and then after I drive the car a bunch if that line isn't lined up anymore I know this is loosened so it's a good way to keep an eye on your bolts and with that final detail we've completely installed the driver's side seat now let's quickly install the passenger seat I'm just going to do a quick overview and show you the main differences from this side and that side and the first difference and probably the biggest difference you can see that fasteners fitting in that ones fitting in and that ones fitting in just fine but if you look down here the hole in the bracket does not line up with the hole in the chassis so the bolt doesn't fit in so what we need to do is grab a paint marker and just mark off the area that we're going to have to cut out so to carve out that extra material I'm going to be using a carbide bit on a rotary tool and that extra material we had to remove from the bracket is enough to get our bolt in there so take away from this is these brackets are helpful but be prepared to drill and make some changes luckily the rest of the install was the same as the driver's side torque down all the bolts run the seatbelt through the harness slots and torque down the seatbelt bolt and with the seatbelt anchor bolt torqued down we have finished and that is everything you need to know on how to install racing seats man this looks so good and now you know what we need to do we need to go for a ride so let's get in the car start er up since I won't be getting to the track till next week I don't have anywhere to really test these seats out but man already I am surprised at how different this car feels to drive you can feel there's more of a direct connection to the car probably because these seats are bolted directly to the frame and you can feel there's more vibration through the seat compared to stock you really feel like you're stuck into the seat and you're one with the car and that just made this car so much more fun to drive so there you go I was not expecting that at all these seats make a huge difference on how this car feels so even if you're not going on the track now I'd consider getting these seats just because it made me feel so much more attached to the car when I was driving I really like it a lot the seats themselves were comfortable the seat belt worked fine and that's how you install racing seats hopefully the video was helpful if it was remember to give it a thumbs up also if you're not subscribed consider subscribing everything I used in this video is linked in the description and stay tuned I cannot wait to take this on the track and see how it feels that video and a bunch of other awesome videos are coming up

Channel: ChrisFix

Views: 3,524,285

Rating: 4.8977866 out of 5

Keywords: racing seat install, aftermarket seat installation, how to install racing seats, how to installl aftermarket seats, Sparco racing seats, OMP Racing Seats, Takata Harness, recaro racing seats, Corbeau racing seats, how to install car seat, car seat, car seats, car seat install, driftstang, momo racing seats

Id: sfr51IPk3X4

Length: 21min 29sec (1289 seconds)

Published: Wed May 10 2017