Guys i am strongly considering buying a matching front set of racing/bucket seats and am looking at sparco and status seats. I know some might say why do this to the car or you gonna loose massage functions etc but could live without those very easily...

Anybody have any experience with these companies? Any recommendations?

 

Having done this type of swap in Porsche's, the two big things you have to watch out for are:

1) Sensors in the factory seats for airbags, esp. on the passenger side. You're going to have to get shop manual, figure out the pinouts for the connector and then make sure you can wire the connector to make it appear no one is in the passenger seat or someone is always in the passenger seat so it activates the pass side airbag. I suspect if you just disconnect the cable and leave it hang, it will throw some kind of dash error code.

2) If you're thinking about 5-point harnesses then you also have to deal with the seat belt interlock sensor or else you will get a constant seat belt chime.

Race seats aren't really too practical for the street. They are hard to get in and out of, esp. for the ladies. They have only fore/aft manual adjustment. No up/down, tilt, seatback or anything else. They are generally quite narrow, so not everyone can fit in them comfortably.

I would think very carefully before pulling the trigger and see if you can find a shop that does street car to track car conversions to help you pull this off. It is tricky to replace the stock seats in any new car with all the safety features built into them now.

 

dont forget a rollcage

 

Wow lots of detail here. Doesn't sound like a good mod for an E63. You'll probably lose 2x the value of the seats on trade... Or you'll need to go through the trouble of putting the eom seats back in properly and sell the racing seats to someone else. Not for me!

 

dont do it....

 

Thank you for the detailed response.
Sensors for airbags and airbags themselves are what's holding me back. I honestly don't think I need a shop for the install but I would definitely need some help regarding the airbags. I guess will have to look around for more info.


On a side note a lot of negativity on this forum. People pls lighten up a bit.

 

Do you really track the car that much?

For cars that see light duty, I've used a CG lock on the 3 pointer. They do a pretty good job of stabilizing your lower body.

Look at the Simpson H&N offerings for compatibility with 3 Pt belts.

$0.02

 

I might do this also

 

You're right, especially now when seats are really designed into the car as a "system", not just a place for someone to sit. As a system, they are typically tied into the car's electronic bus and controlled by the car's computer's. If you start replacing or disrupting that, you have to be sure you know all of the signals the computer is expecting and can find a way to spoof them.

If you are serious, start with a set of electrical diagrams and try to determine all of the connections to the seat and what they are used for. The main things to look for are weight sensors that tell the car there is someone in the seat and to arm the airbag, seatbelt interlock sensors to tell the car if the seatbelt is fastened, and control connections for the airbags themselves that are built into the sides of the stock seats.

Assuming you can find a way to deal with all of that, the next challenge is the seat rails and seat mounting points. For a 911, you can find companies that make replacement rails that will fit but for an E63 you will probably need to find someone who can make a custom set of seat rails to fit the aftermarket seats into the car.

The last issue is belts. If you plan to use 6 point belts, the lap belts can probably be mounted where the stock belts are. The crotch belts can be mounted to the aftermarket seat frame but I don't know where you would mount the shoulder belts. In a race car, there is generally a roll cage with a cross member behind the seat that the shoulder belts can be mounted to. Not sure what you would use in a 4/5 person sedan without giving up use of the back seat entirely.

I'm not trying to be negative. As I said, I've done this before and I'm just trying to make you aware of the challenges you are likely to face.

Karl

 

run 10's full weight ! u are not suppose to rice out a Benz especially a AMG

 

I'm not sure about the Airbag sensor voltage in the AMG's, but when I had my STi you could just wire three 1 ohm resistors in parallel and put them in the plug and it fooled the airbag light to thinking they where still attached.