Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

If you attach your side mounts directly to the original anchor points then your seat will be quite close to the pedals. 5'8" driver max I'd say.

I have. I fitted Sparco side mounts to the original positions. Welding anything in just reduces your headroom so this is best in every respect.

For MSA compliance Id suggest drilling through, ignoring the captives which are always on the verge of failing and welding a Blue Book friendly spreader to the outer floor to support each fixing.

If the mounts are wider than the seat (which they almost always are), I use a machined cotton bobbin-like piece to space the seat centrally along with slightly extended bolts. A slightly more expedient solution involves a piece of alloy round stock cut into slices and drilled centrally.

Consider yourselves lucky enough to have electricity and butter! I eat dry bread.


Simon

Hhmm, thanks gents.

The std mounting points will be no good as I'm a man mountain!

I guess we'll just have to see when the seat is in the right position. I suspet that combined with the new Momo wheel it'll mean it is mounted way back from std.

After some deliberation I will not be going with a cage this season, but will be adding a harness bar. Need to look at options for that.

With a couple of wheel spacers and a good rake youll clear the roof easily enough (the further back the better).

I was presuming that youd use an approved slider, but if youre fixing it then Id locate the reinforcers where you need them and drill though. The captives are between a double skin, but they can be carefully removed to flatten the floor if need be.

Whixhever way you do it Id advise that the plates are welded to the outside for clearance and Id feather their edges too.

In that case I think I'll get rid of the mounting points completely in the cabin. Then, as you say, strengthen underneath and just bolt it in.

The car is about to receive full underbody protection so now is probably the right time to do it!

I really need to get busy with the cabin strip and then decide how to clean it all up. Then itl get a quick and dirty blow over with rattle cans to match the exterior (also crappy!) and the seats can go in.

I've got a blooming lot of work to do.

There isn't much headroom in a 944 to mount seats, a bit more if you strip out the soundproofing in the sunroof and cut off the strengthening ribs.. I used some mounts from Prepfab - in the standard captive nuts. The mounts are in 3 pieces & can be much more easily adjusted for width and length.

These are the same ones
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Alloy-Race-Seat-Mount-Side-Mounting-Brackets-Sub-Frame-/290633898678

Simon's point about strength is worth noting I guess - rallying a 944 could put those 4 mounting points under a lot of load

Just back from my handy mechanic where we've just spent an hour pouring over the car and making plans.

With the new seats we're now over 50kg out of the car and a bit more to come. The ride height on the back is up 9mm so some work is going into that. New Eibach springs with a std ride height minus 20mm should give the right ride height.

A bespoke harness bar is being welded across the C pillar rather than the b pillar. Gives more room for seat and it will have two return bars giving essentially half a half cage!

As for the seats, it turns out some helpful chap had put 1.5'' spacers under the driver's seat, not great for headroom. We measured up the new seats height and width and they'll go in a treat. The permanent mounts will not use those on the raised front pair but set into the floor behind it. My chap has some titanium offcuts so will be making up a set of bespoke above strengthening slabs plus the same underneath. Essentially the floor pan will be sandwiched between the two titanium slabs and the seats bolted through all three pieces - that should spread the load nicely.

Phew, time for a beer!

I believe that the aluminium seat raisers on series ones were fitted to all cars and removed at PDI if not required. They were usually thrown away or mispalced by owners who were given them and few cars still have them fitted today.

Ironically the breaking parasites now try to sell them on eBay for comical prices.

Mine wasn't quite so well thought out.

It had a series of washers wrapped in a Porsche branded cotton tape that I've never seen before, kind of like a packet of polo mints.

I'm currently researching more on the car as it is a very early one so wonder if this was some kind of experiment.

Anyway, wish I'd kept them now for posterity at least. If the bin in the garage hasn't been emptied yet I'll see if I can fish them out.

I managed to sneak some time in between real life this weekend and did a few more jobs.

Started off stripping the sunroof bare as I'm going to be adding an external air vent to the roof because it is likely to get a bit hot with the lexan fixed side windows while rallying. Was quite a fiddly job actually. The plastic grommets didn't want to budge so I had to drill them all out.



Then I decided to do an aesthetic job for once! The wiper arms were horrible and rusty so I stripped them black and did an Edd China special - a nice bit of satin black!



Then the rear wiper, motor and wiring came out and on went a nice new light bung. Looks miles better and, as has been said already here, the boot lid now opens so much easier.



Then a play with the door cards. I had imagined I would just whip everything off and leave them bare. However, they std doorcards on my early car are so incredibly light it seemed like a bit of a waste to bin them. So I stripped everything off them inc all power window and power mirror wiring. I've left the window switches on for now but I'll just blank them off once the lexan windows are in.

Revel in the majesty of my new drivers side handle for closing the door. It is actually the little metal ring that is fitted in the boot dead centre and is the perfect finger size for easy door closing. I'm not sure what its for but I just unscrewed it and then screwed it into one of the holes that the door bins were attached to. Great Stuttgart recycling in action!





Then I bunged the new Momo Corse wheel on. Feels very different. Obviously a little bit harder on the forearms at low speed as I don't have PAS but on the move it is a great wheel. Very happy with it.



And now onto my Heath Robinson contraption that I am very, VERY happy with!

I was a bit turned off by the gaping maw left by the stereo coming out. So with my fists of ham I decided to do something about it.

Out came the cage and after 5 minutes with a tape measure and some old black carpet I had the ingredients ready.



Dripping in contact adhesive.



All put together and drying.





I've since tacked down all the edges and folded back the little metal tangs to keep the front flush with the dash. I'm really chuffed with it. As the rest of the interior is completely stripped it'll come in handy for storing the odd pack of fags or whatever.

That's about it for now. The big jobs are starting at the end of the week - new springs and shocks, fully polybushes, front light pod sorted etc.

Another update as postman has just been!

Fitted the stereo delete whotsit into place. Great to have some storage space. Now just got to fit something around the front lip so it looks a bit neater.



Also the light pod arrived from France. I am absolutely delighted with it. It is made specifically for the early front cars and fits like a glove. There is a return lip on the front side which slides up and under the badge panel. Then the contour along the sides is bang on and it'll be bolted through the badge panel with quick release clips so it can be kept off the car when it's being stored.

€191 delivered was quite good I thought, plus a 10% discount available for 2 or more orders. Took 6 working days to arrive from order.

On the bench



On the car (not fitted, just trying for size)

Great bit of DIY work, at virtually no cost as well!

That finger-sized ring is supposed to be a luggage hook to tie thing on to, or attach a bungee cord.

you can save more weight by stripping all the inards / motor, wiring etc out of the doors, lexan in place, i made my own door cards from carbon look plastic and added a mini cooper door pull.

I'm really chuffed with 'retasking' various bits. I did a lot of that when rally prepping the old Citroen DS - very satisfying to find a new use for something.



Cheers Stu. The doors are already completely stripped inside, just bare shells now like yours. I just wanted to keep the original doorcards as they're so damned light already on these early cars. I may well pick up a Cooper-esque handle-strap though, yours looks great.

My lexan windows arrived yesterday too from ACW Motorsport in Bristol. They'll be going in shortly.

The last few days I've been racing to get the interior finished before the car goes off to someone who knows what they're doing for the important bits: new adjustable Konis all round, full Powerflex bush kit, seats mounted and reinforced harness bar in etc.

So, pretty much there with the inside now. It is a bit of an amateur job but it is a rally car so will need to be redone every year or so I guess, especially the footwells.

I've gone for the same colour in and out - Montego Black. It'll be very hot but with the combination of the new roof vent and a heavy right foot I'll do my best to keep it cool...









Now just needs a final blow over when I get home from work and then a couple of coats of clearcoat.

Badabing, job jobbed!