Not done much to the car this week for two reasons. Firstly, I was away for much of the week on a 900 mile round trip sales trip taking in North Yorkshire, Plymouth and Bristol.
The second reason is that there is just not that much left to do! Have not heard anything from VOSA about my SVA yet so it is just a case of finishing off a few things ahead of the car going to MAC#1 for final prep.
One thing I was able to do this week was to pick up the seats from MAC#1 so that is what I concentrated on this weekend.
Fitting in the seats is a simple enough process but it does involve a fair bit of drilling to make the sub-frame for the seats. Here is how.
MAC#1 seats are fibreglass shells with no padding but they suit the racecar nature of my build.
The seats are supported by a substantial aluminium sub-frame which is supplied in several raw bits as pictured below.
It looks something like this when put together.
But no holes are pre-drilled so you have to drill all the holes yourself and the exact position of these holes can only be determined by trial fitting the actual seats.
One great thing is that as the sun was shining, I was able to do the work on a bench outside (until it started raining 😦 ).
The large flat support goes at the back of the runner with the angled support supporting the front of the seat. I drilled holes for the rear support 6cm and 9.5cm in from the end with the edge of the upright being at 12cm. This allowed me to put it in the same place on all four runners but it may be different on other cars.
Once the rear upright was bolted in place, I positioned the seat next to the runner and marked the position for the angled from support.
As you can see in the last picture, I make a mistake on the last one and forgot to build it as a mirror image of the opposite. Not a big problem but left a couple of superfluous holes in the runner. No one will ever see them as they are under the seat, but I hope that when I come to sell the car, the potential buyer does not read this blog as I think I have listed all the mistakes I have made!
The seat is bolted to the sub-frame using two bolts at the front and one at the rear on each side. Then off to the car to trial fit the seats and mark the final position in the car.
The seats are bolted to the floor using M8 bolts and load spreading washers. These are a little hard to get to as the seats are in the way of putting in the rear ones but with a bit of fiddling it all went ok. One top tip from Colin at MAC#1, pull the tip out from a marker pen and you can get in to awkward places to mark the drill holes.
Once the seats were fitted, I bolted in the seat belts. In the MAC#1, the seat belt mounting points are welded directly to the chassis so it is just a case of bolting it in at the top and at the rear behind the seats. This is a little tricky but with the appropriate ratchet extensions, it is ok.
I finally got to get in to the drivers seat and experience what it will be like to be behind the wheel.
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