Alpine951

I purchased some seats for my car for use with restraints for Drivers Ed. The seats are manufactured by AXE. They manufacture rally seats and the distributor says there are no sliders for a Porsche. The seat does come with sliders, but the mounting points on the sliders are shorter and more narrow than the holes in the floor of my 1986 951. The sliders are not side mounts. My thoughts were to make a bracket from some steel at Home depot that will be attached to the stock holes in the floor, and that I will then need to mount the aftermarket seat rail to the steel. If I mount the flat steel bar to the floor then I think I would need to put a spacer between the steel bar and the floor so that I can then put a bolt from underneath the steel bar and into the seat rail. Does this sound correct? Flimsy? The stock holes in the floor I assume are reinforced so these are good mount points. But the seat will be attached to the bar, not the floor. Any thoughts would be appreciated.



John

Stan944

It might be better without spacers, provided you tap the holes in the new bracket. Than again, it's hard to give advice without seeing the actual product.
Also make sure this installation is OK with your club, cause if they do a safety inspection and don't like it, your project will be wasted!

eclou

Most seats are about the same design. Try to mount the seats to some side-mount brackets for Sparcos or Recaros. These brackets then mount to the top of the sliders, which are bottom mount and should fit your car. Sparcos are a near direct fit to the factory holes. The Paragon website has a great write-up on this.

MHT

if you are going to fabricate an adapter, make sure that the steel you use is strong enough for the job. Most of the adapters i have seen look to be about 5/16 to 3/8 inches thick. If the belts mount to the rails or the seat, this is even more critical, if the belts mount to the body of the car, you might be able to get away with something a bit less beefy.

RedlineMan

Hey John;

As you have guessed, and others have offered, you need to be real careful with this. I would not use flat stock to bolt to the floor because unless it is extremely thick or a high carbon alloy, it will not stand much force in a bending fashion without failing. You need some triangulation. Plain steel is not very strong in bending, but it is in shear.

I use angle iron to mount A/M seats to the sliders in Porsches. If the owner does not have an extra set of seat tracks, JAZ Products makes a rugged double locking set for around $40. The only problem is that these tracks are shorter between the mount holes than the stock sliders. I weld the seat track to angle iron and then drill new holes for them to mount too the stock holes in the floor.



What you see above is the JAZ slider. The side plate is fabricated and welded to the track. For later seat mounts, I weld this arrangement in a piece of angle iron to lengthen the slider to match the factory bolt hole distance.

It is involved, as you by now have surmized!



By the by... those early factory 911 mounts are crap. I have since redone this car's mounts with .125"x1.250 angle iron tranverse mounts welded to the rocker, center tunel, and floor.

David Ray

Sube Sports - has a way of putting almost any seat into a 944/951. They carry a great selection of hardware and most of it's in stock. They're in Huntington Beach, CA. WEB: subesports.com

Alpine951

Just had an idea. rectangular steel tubing. Thick gauge. The wide side mounted to the stock mount points and the seat bolted on top.

KuHL 951

I've got both my seats out right now and I think this would work.

Mount the new seat directly to a 1/4" 6061 alum. plate wide/long enough to span the original 6 holes of the OEM seat. Mount your OEM rails using the original 6 bolts to the plate. Mount the OEM rails to the floor using the original holes. This would have nearly the same shear properties as the original seat. A reinforcing piece could be welded at the new seat mounting holes but I doubt if it's necessary. With this set-up the seat would still slide on the original tracks. Most of the aftermarket seats are lower than OEM so the new seat might have to rest on some form of riser. If no slider is required I think the side mount would be best. Hope it works out for you.

Steve