New Seats are here! Now who has gone NASA and can provide feedback?

@benster   Since you have an IM ... these are available from IM directly, email them.

@benster, I know that @Stan Galat has done exactly what you're planning, so hopefully he'll chime in here.

@Lane Anderson posted:

@benster, I know that @Stan Galat has done exactly what you're planning, so hopefully he'll chime in here.

I've got to walk out the door, but I've done this with several different seats. My advice is to keep in mind that raising the front without dropping the back will make you sit pretty high in the car (defeating the purpose).

Get the back of the seat as low as you can go, and raise the front to suit. The trick is in doing this and keeping your adjustable tracks - they have to go parallel with the floor, not with the seat bottom - else moving them fore and aft also moves the seat up and down. It's far, far easier to bolt them in a fixed position than to try for seat sliders.

I have had the same seats in two Spyders. In the first car, they were mounted flat to the floor. I the second, I added an inch and a half lift on the front, and about 3/8" in the rear. This allowed me to actually adjust my crotch straps on the five-point belts. I'm definitely more comfortable tilted back a bit, my thighs are better supported and I feel more "in" the car.

All of this depends on your torso and leg length though. In both of my cars I did not install sliders, the seats are fixed. But the car is for me and me only. I did also make a set of 4-5 inch pedal extensions for the wife, though! She has yet to use them.

A Speedster has a slightly higher cowl and windshield so you are afforded a bit more room to work with.

My seats came with those sliders. I wanted to be as low as possible, (I have a Spyder) so I ditched them and bolted the rear of my seats to the floor and raised the front with spacers.

I wanted to minimize the holes drilled in the floor, so I mounted some flat stock to the bottom with a few holes in the rear for future adjustments. I just had to drill two new holes for the front since I was using the existing rear holes. This leaves me with just two unused holes, but having some holes in the floorboard is good for drainage.

Maybe one day I'll replace that stack of spacers with a nice peace of wood or aluminum. I also did the same to the passenger seat.

The '70-76 Porsche 914 had a clever seat adjustment that had both tracks for back/forward and a toothed cog that allowed the front to be raised/lowered. Blue is the back hinge and the red is the toothed cog for height adjustment.  Lever on side adjusts height and a D shaped handle is on the top sliding track - not shown here.

I had 914 seats and the glides that Greg shows were pretty neat.  Remove them from the seat, get them positioned on the car's floor where you want them, anchor them down and then the seat can be slid onto the glides from the front, zip-zap.  

If you need to remove the seats, just glide them all the way forward where a spring-loaded tab keeps them from falling off of the track, push the tab spring up to release the seat and push it forward off the track and lift it out of the car.

Pretty slick.

Those seat rails were one of the things I loved about my 914. I like the tilted back setting, and removing the seat for cleaning or whatever, was SO easy. If only modern cars were so easy.

But, when you slid the seat forward in the tilted back position, this made you higher. This wasn't an issue in the 914 and it might not be an issue in a Speedster. Just something to keep in mind.

I love this group. I'll have the car back today and will start the fun. I dig the idea of mounting direct to floor, at 6'3" I will take every bit of space I can get. I did reach out to IM to see if I could purchase complete seats before going to VMC, I was unsuccessful. IM has helped me in the past, but I also figured a local pick up option would be smarter than shipping bulky items from out of country, so I didn't follow up. VMC HQ is 45 min away.... I Will reach out to IM about the tracks they make if I don't have a homemade solution worked out. Thanks everyone!

Talk with Greg at VMC, there are many taller owners that have seats on tracks. I have a CMC flared here now that was owned by a tall big guy , with the speedster seat all the way back and at 5'7", I can hardly touch the pedals and feel like I'm sitting on the floor.

@Alan Merklin I did ask him about tilting and he mentioned shims in the front of the seat. To me, this is the fun stuff to work out!

Thx again everyone for your input!

For every couple of shims, the tilt back lowers your torso position  and lowers your line of sight.

Here's drivers side 914 seat tracks on eBay - just missing the toothed cog - $60 OBO

Porsche 914 914/6 Seat Rail Slider | eBay

It's completely possible to have the tracks, just not very easy or useful. If Ben is 6'3", I'd recommend just doing what Carlos did. At the very best, tracks add an inch of overall height to the bottom of the seat.

Al is right, your line of sight is (obviously) reduced the lower you go in the car- but this is vastly superior to having the top of the windshield at eye level. A person with a long torso WANTS to be sitting on the floor.

@benster, it's just as well that IM didn't want to sell you seats or tracks. You have a pan-based car, and the seating area and mounting points on an IM car are wider than what you've got. Their setup won't work in your car.

@Stan Galat my car is the IM roadster, it’s a tube frame. I just bought the seats from VMC is all. I got some great input here. Car comes back to me today I’m excited to mess woth all the options. I’ll most likely go fixed position on the floor. In the rare instance someone has to drive it and they can’t reach the pedals, a pillow will do!

I've used standard tracks with a stack of washers under the front bolt on many of my cars including Intermeccanica's
-=theron

I'm using the tracks and comfy seats from VMC in a pan based IM. I put the seats in the car and figured out how much I wanted the fronts to be raised. I bought longer, hardened bolts to accommodate the height. I bought some stainless spacers that gave me the height I wanted. I ground off the short bolts that came on the tracks and replaced them with the longer bolts and spacers (with a fender washer on the seat base side). It's been working fine for me. Good luck!

Well if it is a pan your going in  the right direction. I have a very long torso and my eye level is mid windshield and my head is below the top of the windshield.  At times I have to pull up or adjust the rake to get a less slouched vision but crusing on the highway is really laid back and Come for the bull.

Ahhhh dang it. Been doing the mock up the past few hours on the passenger seat ( I have a canyon drive this weekend and don’t want to be without driver seat).  After a lot of shimming and moving etc I got it pretty comfy. Then I took a step back and realized how bad the speedster seat looks in the roadster. The reason is the reclined top. It’s far more bulk than the speedster top. It looks pretty bad in my opinion. I decided to walk away ron it for the night and try fresh eyes in the morning. I had the pictured seats in my last beck, can someone telL me what style these are? Even better, anyone want to trade for some brand new heated speedster seats?? Dang it. Maybe tomorrow will bring forth new ideas.

They look like Recaro style to me.  When you get it right...

Those are the Spyder seats that Beck originally also used in the Speedster.  Those look like they've been over-stuffed a bit, which actually looks good in that color.

@benster posted:

@Stan Galat my car is the IM roadster, it’s a tube frame. I just bought the seats from VMC is all. I got some great input here. Car comes back to me today I’m excited to mess woth all the options. I’ll most likely go fixed position on the floor. In the rare instance someone has to drive it and they can’t reach the pedals, a pillow will do!

I'm so sorry for misunderstanding. If you've got a tube-frame IM, you have a lot of possibilities.

The cheapest option (by far) that looks "right" in a Roadster is the EMPI 62-2960 - they look a lot like Henry's Roadster seats, or a Procar 90 series. Mounted directly to seat sliders, they ride higher than you'd like, but still sit pretty low for a spring seat.

I have a set in my car (my third set of seats in search of something that would satisfy my wife and I both) - her's is unmodified (other than being recovered in leather), mine is heavily modified to sit very, very low in the car, and still use sliders. I completely remade the bottom frame of my seat to actually recess the tracks into the frame, and cut down the cushion. Upholstery was not easy and not cheap, but I made both seats match. and feel good to both Jeanie and me.

Both seat bases are pitched back aggressively, but if you look at the base of mine, and compare it to the base of hers, you can see what I did.

What I had said in another thread (about a year ago) was this:

"The passenger's seat is "as delivered", with a set of seat sliders bolted to the bottom. It sits surprisingly low for a spring seat.

My seat (however) is so low that I recessed a track into the cushion on either side of the center section (in the bolsters) so that the bottom of the springs in the back of the base are flush with the floor, but the seat slider remains functional. The back support grazes (well.. maybe "drags" is a better word) the carpet when the seat is all the way back, but the sliders are on an angle so that the seat rises as it moves forward. The springs are all there, which makes an enormous difference in comfort.

I cut down the foam in the seat bottom so that it was about 3/4 of an inch thick at the junction of the seat and seat-back, and tapered it upward towards the front (which was left intact. I had to buy a 18" long serrated knife on Amazon to get a nice cut. The upholstery shop had to add 2" of foam to the bottom of the seat-back to close the gap created when I cut the cushion down.

My butt is about an inch and a half (or less) off the floor in my normal driving position. I was able to get as low as I was with Fibersteel seat shells, mounted directly to the floor. I also pitched the seat base pretty aggressively, as pitching back makes an enormous difference for me being comfortable. The recline adjustment on the seat-back allows me to fine tune the fit depending on if the driving is aggressive or interstate.

My wife (5'5" ish) sits like a very small child or a 90 year old woman in the driver's seat. The top of the wheel is roughly even with her forehead."

The takeaway of the last paragraph is that remaking the driver's seat so that it could slide was probably just an exercise in proving I could, rather than doing anything useful. Bolting an unmodified (but tipped) 62-2960 seat to the floor would have provided 90% of the comfort at 10% of the cost.

I have more details (but not as many as I thought) on a thread I started to detail my 2019/2020 winter projects. The link is here, and the seat part of the program is on Page 4.

Good luck.

I had roadster seat from IM, the headrest was way below my shoulders I tried the speedster seats and while comfortable I could not envision driving 12 hours in one eventually I settled on Recaro's they fit me andthat is what matters in the end and I drove 12 hours on my maiden voyage without any issues.

Henry's guy did a bang up job doing up in Spinneybeck leather.

In the end the quest for good seating varies with the body styles of course and personal taste as always, enjoy the hunt.

@IaM-Ray posted:

I had roadster seat from IM, the headrest was way below my shoulders I tried the speedster seats and while comfortable I could not envision driving 12 hours in one eventually I settled on Recaro's they fit me andthat is what matters in the end and I drove 12 hours on my maiden voyage without any issues.

Henry's guy did a bang up job doing up in Spinneybeck leather.

In the end the quest for good seating varies with the body styles of course and personal taste as always, enjoy the hunt.

Those look an awful lot like the “Sport Seats” in Porsches. FWIW, they’re probably 2-3” wider than the Beck Speedster seats I have in my Spyder, but less comfortable. For some reason the left-side bolster in my 968 has a “pressure point” on my left thigh that gets uncomfortable after 45 minutes or so.
I overhang both sides on my Spyder seats, but I find them all-day comfortable.  But then, I rode one of these from Milan to the Isle of Man and back and you wouldn’t believe how comfortable that seat turned out to be.

Well as I mentioned, seats and your anatomy have to fit.

'Cuz if they don't, somethin's gotta give and it usually ain't the seats.