Racing seat and harness

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Joined
Aug 14, 2014
Messages
4,299
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1,347
Location
Madison, WI
My Car
1971 Mach 1 w/408C stroker
As I am getting more hardcore into racing I needed to find a way to fix myself in the car. I eventually was spending too much effort keeping myself in place instead of using that effort to drive. I decided to non-permanently add a race seat with harness. My idea is to have the regular seat in the car and swap the race car seat before races. It only takes 15-20 minutes to do so not a big deal. Before each race I will also need to attach the side brackets of the harness.

The first step was finding a seat that is lower that stock. I am only 5'7" and with a helmet on the stock seat I am scratching the headliner. After a lot of digging online I was not finding a low enough seat until I went to a race shop nearby to try their seats. I was not looking for a race bucket seat but rather one that can recline and slide - called tuning seat. They only have one but it was perfect. This was an OMP Style seat (https://www.ompamerica.com/en_us/style-78057.html). The seat cushion was lower than stock and it was confortable. I also purchased the OMP sliders which add about 1/2" in height and attached these to a Wedge seat adapter (https://wedgebrackets.com/ford-mustang-71-73-seat-brackets.html). This adapter was very well made and it was as low as it can be to the carpet/platform. I had to enlarge one of the rear holes to make it fit but it also could be that my seat platforms have been slightly modified. The seat adapter is about 1/4" above the carpet so my next step would be to enlarge those holes to lower it 1/4" - I will be welding grade 8 washer to the enlarged holes in case of any weakness.

Now to the race harness. I was not looking for something permanently so a traditional 4 point harness was going to be challenging. That's when I found Schroth race tuning harnesses. The Rallie-3 was perfect for my application (https://www.schrothracing.com/item/rallye-3-asm/tuning-Harnesses). This harness uses one attachment point at the rear with dual shoulder harnesses and anti-submarine technology. I already had an attachment point in the rear from when I added my 3-point harness to the rear seats (https://7173mustangs.com/threads/added-a-3-point-seat-belt-to-my-fold-down-rear-seats.35703/). I feel very confortable with this attachment point since it is next to the rear rail. I had to cut the plastic trim a little and it fits very well. When not in use I just need to unclip the rear strap and fold it behind the rear seat. To get ready for the race I just need to fold the rear seat down and clip the rear strap to the harness.

I used this system last week for the first time and it definitely works. It keeps me strap to the seat and I was not moving anywhere.

Here are pictures of the final product.
 

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