The Oval Craft seat now has a Certificate of Occupancy.
A seat is a seat until it comes loose in a crash. Even with all thebelts securely latched, the driver is almost free to move about thecockpit when a seat mounting comes loose. Often he is bounced aroundlike a pinball.
Worse yet is a case in which the seat is mounted to the floor but thebelts are mounted to the cage. In a hard side impact, the cage can beshoved over toward the right side of the car. The seat is then, no punintended, 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 aredoing their best to deform the seat.
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.
At no time is a poorly designed seat mount a healthy situation. I'm surethere are some racers who can tell a tale about mounting seats to thefloor and having survived tremendous impacts. These stories areanalogous to those stories of drivers with no seatbelts being thrownclear of an accident.
I have seen a variety of seat mountings over the years, even inprofessionally built cars in which the seat mounting looked trick andsaved a pound or two of left weight. Some use one mount at the top ofthe seat and another near the junction of the seatback to the seatbottom. This cantilevers the front part of the seat out into space.Looking trick and saving a little left weight can be a foolish way tobuild a car. I think builders wanting to save a little time do thissometimes.
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.
The method we will describe here for mounting a seat is not the only wayit can be done. However, this way is tried, true, and strong.
Rollcage Dummy
When welding the short slider tubes to the side rails, don't weld wherethe welder is pointed in this picture. This will cause the tube to warpas shown. Tack weld a spot 90 degrees around the tube where the notched saddle does not contact the slider tube.Now if there is any warp, it will be parallel to the crossbars, and theywill still slide easily.
For this project, we again used Stock Car Racing's rollcage dummy. Thisis a generic cage built of lightweight exhaust pipe material to make iteasy to move about the shop. Much of it is tack welded together tofacilitate taking parts off and on as well as changing itsconfiguration. With this dummy, only components necessary for theproject are in place. There are no extraneous pieces to distract the eyein a photo. The dummy can be tipped to any angle necessary for a photothat 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.
Mount Up
Having used a variety of seat mountings over the years, I like a mountthat attaches only to the rollcage. The mount should cradle the seat andbe strong enough to carry seatbelt mountings. Seatbelts should beattached directly to the seat mount so that if the mount/cage moves in acrash, you won't be strangled by belts attached somewhere else.