A seat is a seat until it comes loose in a crash. Even with all the belts securely latched, the driver is almost free to move about the cockpit when a seat mounting comes loose. Often he is bounced around like a pinball.
Worse yet is a case in which the seat is mounted to the floor but the belts are mounted to the cage. In a hard side impact, the cage can be shoved over toward the right side of the car. The seat is then, no pun intended, a sitting duck while the cage moves toward it and the driver. All this time, the driver is being yanked by the belts, and his ribs are doing their best to deform the seat.
At no time is a poorly designed seat mount a healthy situation. I'm sure there are some racers who can tell a tale about mounting seats to the floor and having survived tremendous impacts. These stories are analogous to those stories of drivers with no seatbelts being thrown clear of an accident.
I have seen a variety of seat mountings over the years, even in professionally built cars in which the seat mounting looked trick and saved a pound or two of left weight. Some use one mount at the top of the seat and another near the junction of the seatback to the seat bottom. This cantilevers the front part of the seat out into space. Looking trick and saving a little left weight can be a foolish way to build a car. I think builders wanting to save a little time do this sometimes.
The method we will describe here for mounting a seat is not the only way it can be done. However, this way is tried, true, and strong.
For this project, we again used Stock Car Racing's rollcage dummy. This is a generic cage built of lightweight exhaust pipe material to make it easy to move about the shop. Much of it is tack welded together to facilitate taking parts off and on as well as changing its configuration. With this dummy, only components necessary for the project are in place. There are no extraneous pieces to distract the eye in a photo. The dummy can be tipped to any angle necessary for a photo that is intended to demonstrate a point.
The dummy was previously used in "What Is Your Net Worth," SCR Feb '04, and I'm sure it will be used again for other projects.
The Oval Craft seat now...
The Oval Craft seat now has a Certificate of Occupancy.
The CSC Racing seat mounting...
The CSC Racing seat mounting kit with the Oval Craft seat. Some A&AManufacturing tabs are also shown. The instruction sheet in theforeground takes away any confusion about how to build it.
A Craftsman battery-powered...
A Craftsman battery-powered reciprocating saw is used to re-configurethe SCR rollcage dummy for this project. Made of exhaust tubingand tack welded together, the dummy allows us to do a projectlike this without the rest of the car in the way of the photos.