Since the transmission tunnel is now in place, seat mounts could be made. I wanted these as low and back as possible, and while I could've waited for cage time to make them, it seemed like a reasonable thing to do sooner rather than later so that things like pedal placement could be figured out.
First, tacked the landing plates (1/8" thick) in and cut some .75"x1.5" rectangle tube to length, then plopped the seat in. Nice and far back, with plenty of adjustment forward if needed (yes I trimmed down the excessive side bracket later for final fitment):
Moving way back should hopefully do a few things- get the weight of the squishy human ballast onto the rear wheels, give us some usable room in the cabin, make the shifter actually reachable, and most importantly, get that nice thick factory B pillar involved as the first line of defense if we smack something sideways. I could also use more headroom than I have in the current car, hence the super flat profile tubing.
Also something I don't frequently see discussed is how far inboard the seats can sit. This is hard to push much further inboard than stock BRZ seating, but it's a nice spot to give plenty of clearance to the door bars- both in case of impact, and that gap is a nice place to put the codriver bag and triangles and whatnot:
Although Sara hasn't necessarily selected her seat yet, I'm using this Momo Daytona since I like how they fit and the ones in the current car are holding up well. The seat mounts are mirrored and with the OMP brackets having plenty of adjustability, should fit whatever she chooses as long as the width isn't crazy different.
Onward with the thick-to-thin deeply annoying welding of the plates:
You can see the slot I cut in the floor for the angle iron runner to sink into- rather than notch the (very much structural) angle iron I decided to notch the thin floor instead and stitch it back together after. That area is actually a box section and is closed underneath. The inboard front landing plate is extra long, because the transmission mount lives there and I figured why not brace it while I'm doing this:
The windows cut into the tops of the tubes are how I welded the lower edge since it's basically resting on the floor- then I zapped those sections back in:
Next, angle iron runners- these aren't strictly necessary, I could've just made the crossbars exactly the right distance apart and put weld nuts on those, but I'd like some adjustability here and having the entire base of the side brackets resting on something instead of hovering in the middle makes me feel better:
I also welded a 1" tube crossbar to these as an antisubmarine strap mount before dropping them in- there's some debate as to whether this is better than an eyelet on the floor, but my personal preference is not mounting any safety system directly to the lowest part of a rally car:
Welded everything to everything:
I also stitched the crossbars and angle to the floor everywhere that they were close to touching:
These things are really stiff and hopefully we never have to really test them:
Paint:
If the gaps between the welds on the tunnel are jumping out at you, me too- seam sealer and final floor paint waits until I'm sure I'm not welding more.
