Cobra Suzuka Profit GT Review and Bracket Question

[Ike]

I decided I wanted a fixed back racing seat, and I couldn't find a supplier with a ton of seats in stock that I could just go around sitting in. So I drove from SF bay area to Hunting Beach in LA to test fit at Sube Sports. They were courteous, but I don't think the sales guy believed anyone sane would drive six hours just to try seats.

I walked out with a Cobra Suzuka Profit GT, their side brackets, and Planted brand Mustang bracket. I almost walked out with sliders but they were out of stock, good thing I didn't and you'll find out why.
The Suzuka is like Cobra's other seats, but with the high thigh bolstering.
The GT (wide) because I have wide hips and broad shoulders. This means the seat is actually a little loose around my midsection, but its still good.
Not the EVO or models with head restraint because I have broad shoulders and also I wanted to use the stock belts.

The side brackets are from Cobra, and bolted right up. I bolted two front bolts into the Mustang bracket and would need to drill holes for the rear. The side bracket doesn't come with the to-the-floor bolts. The Planted bracket re-uses the OEM bolts to the car. I can't imagine adding sliders to this setup. The Cobra brackets offer little in the way of adjust ability, and the planted brand mount raises things up about half an inch in the front, and a couple inches in the rear.

The seat is WAY more comfortable than the stock cloth seats IMHO.

The problem is that it sits higher than the stock seat. I was hoping to go 3 inches lower, and now its 1 inch higher...... I know I'm probably going to have to weld up something custom, so what are people doing about mounting seats? Do you cut out the part of the chassis the front of the seat bolts to?

Yes I have a dog. Yes the car needs cleaning.

 

[csamsh]

Yup it needs to be custom. I also run this seat, with sliders, and it's at a fine height. I'm actually good with it being slightly higher, and wanted it this way, so I can see the cones better. I had a custom floor bracket made at Vorshlag, and I think they modified my side brackets too.

 

[csamsh]

 

[Bob]

I have a suzuka too, currently mounted with planted side mounts, onto sparco sliders, on a sparco base.

I'm 6' tall, 208 lbs.

I *initially* had some super cool cobra angled side mounts.. similar to yours.... but I wasn't happy with them because they really didn't allow the seat to go very low.

So I bought planted sidemounts for $80.. the L-shaped ones... and they are much, much better.

I can go take some pictures if you like.

One thing to note... If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't have paid extra for the sliders. They make the install more of a pain, and they rattle around in their slots a bit too much, and now that I've got the seat where I want it I never move it anymore.

 

[Bob]

Pictures here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/107801883777490196336/albums/6011971568424485969

 

[kcbrown]

I'm 6'3". I have the Recaro seats in mine, and despite the fact that the seats are as low as they'll go while keeping the tracks (and, actually, probably as low as they'd go even if the tracks were deleted), I still lacked sufficient headroom with a helmet on. So I wound up replacing my headliner with the one from the glass roof car, and having an upholsterer widen the cutout as well as line the roof with closed cell foam. Everything is covered with the same material as the original headliner, so it looks stock.

The stock headliner eats at least an inch of headroom.

And the Mustang has more headroom than most performance cars.

It makes me wonder if there exists a driving school that has cars I'll be able to fit into with a helmet...

 

[Arustik]

I'm 6'3". I have the Recaro seats in mine, and despite the fact that the seats are as low as they'll go while keeping the tracks (and, actually, probably as low as they'd go even if the tracks were deleted), I still lacked sufficient headroom with a helmet on. So I wound up replacing my headliner with the one from the glass roof car, and having an upholsterer widen the cutout as well as line the roof with closed cell foam. Everything is covered with the same material as the original headliner, so it looks stock.

The stock headliner eats at least an inch of headroom.

And the Mustang has more headroom than most performance cars.

It makes me wonder if there exists a driving school that has cars I'll be able to fit into with a helmet...

You have to drive a GT3. Insane amount of headroom. I am also 6' 3" and fit quite comfortably in GT3 RS's. If you're going with a regular GT3 make sure it has no sunroof.

I can't imagine getting a race seats with adjustable brackets would make me sit higher than stock... really?

 

[Vorshlag-Fair]

I always have to go to great lengths to make racing seats fit into cars for me, and I'm only 6'3". We've worked on seats for guys as tall as 6'7", and it starts to get tricky. We've probably done about, ohh, a hundred custom seat installs for folks over the years? These usually required custom lower "chassis" brackets and often sliders and customized side-mount brackets. For a dual purpose car we always try to use a slider, which makes the seat SO much more functional. That way it fits more than just one person, and you can often still use the back seat with a fixed back front seat.

It is rare, but we've raised the seats up for shorter than average folks. Almost universally we end up looking for ways to get the seats lower to add head room, for use with a race helmet. On one of my BMWs we actually changed the roof to a non-sunroof roof skin to add another 1.5" of head room. It is a constant battle.

http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Service/Race-Seat/

The gallery above has some of our seat mounting tricks shown. The side mount brackets from Sparco and Cobra and everyone else are always laughably too tall. Add the bracket needed to match these mounts to the chassis, and then throw in their slim-line dual locking slider (Cobra or Sparco) and you have often added 2" or more to the seat height from OEM. Its terrible, but you end up chasing hours of work to make it all work to fit anyone over about 5'10" with a helmet.

Getting these Sparco/Cobra/etc side mount brackets to work usually involves both the drilling of new holes (lower than the included slots or holes) as well as grinding the inside corners to clear the lap belt harness pass-thru guides.

These side mount brackets are supposed to fit the seat models from the same company, but they rarely do at all of even the included holes. You can see in the pictures above that we had to clearance the front to clear the fabric of the seat from this Sparco EVO seat, with Sparco side brackets. Just part of the fun of adding racing seats.




Nothing can quite describe how WELL a properly mounted racing seat works, though. There are a LOT of variables that need to be addressed - the custom brackets, the correct slider, the seat angle, the fore-aft and lateral locations, the total seat height, the mounting hardware, and proper harness mounting/lengths/eyelets - so don't be shocked to see a four figure bill when getting seats installed by an experienced shop. It can add up to a dozen hours to properly mount two seats and harnesses, easily.

Cheers,

 

[Ike]

Well I'm 5'4" and I want to be as low as possible, to barely be able to see over the steering wheel. Like this:





So I'll take off the side brackets entirely and test fit seat position with some blocks of wood and tape, then just measure, CAD, water-jet, and tig new plates to the planted base mount.

 

[frank s]

You get down too low and you'll lose some vernier on the pendulum effect.

 

[Ike]

You get down too low and you'll lose some vernier on the pendulum effect.

Well I have been enjoying the increased "feel" being higher up in the car.
Maybe I will drill the cobra brackets just to see how low they'll go without custom brackets and welding... however I know they will only really be an inch or two lower than stock, and stock was too high.

This is all different than for tall people...
In the mustang and most other cars, the slight angle the on the seat sliders mean when it moves forward it also goes up!

The planted bracket is angled approximately the same amount as the stock sliders. It's 1/8in above the carpet so I'm not too worried about changing that, however I lose another 0.5 inches with the cobra side mounts in thickness and bolt heads, and another 2.0 inches because the cobra side mounts have basically zero adjustability. I'll drop it down that 2in and see how it feels.