Seat replacement - Spider

["Bain, Bill" <Bill.Bain@domain.elided>]

I replaced the blue seats in my '83 with blue Recaros out of a Porsche
911.  The Spider driver's side floor pan is larger than the passenger
side so the passenger side will require that the Porsche 911 mounts be
used and redrilled for the Spider floor mounting points.  The Porsche
rails raise the seat higher so that wider Recaro will fit alongside the
console.  Either side will require that you make a extender from bar
stock to allow the wider Recaros' mounting points to match the Spider
monting points.  I also had to swap the seat rails from the Spider seats
onto the Recaros, which involved some reworking of the metal around the
bolt holes so I could get a wrench in from the side to tighten the seat
in palce since the Recaros are longer and there's nom access to the
bolts from the top.  The Recaros are wonderful for spirited driving but
they can be fatiguing on long trips since there's little or no room to
move around in them.

I'm not sure I'd do it again, but there are so few options for those of
us with blue interiors.  If you have the more standard colors (black or
tan) a few months ago there was a post about someone using Miata seats,
and IIRC, the amount of engineering involved was considerably less.
AFAIK, Miatas never came with blue interiors.  :-(  

The easiest swap, is to find post 1985 Spider seats.  They are quite a
bit more comfortable than the earlier ones and, of course, they bolt
right in.

Bill Bain 
Assistant General Counsel 
McKESSON Information Solutions Inc. 
5995 Windward Pkwy. 
Alpharetta, GA 30005 
*: 404-338-2067 
Fax: 404-338-5138 
e-*: bill.bain@domain.elided 

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