Seat Runners / Seat fitment

Following on from the trials and tribulations of seat selection and the decision to go with GRP Bucket seats and adjustable runners, now it was a case of getting them fitted into the chassis.

First task, seat runners onto the underside of seats. GBS provide bolts in the underside of the seats so its simply a case of fitting the runners with those bolts into the seat once you have worked out left and right hand runner.

Next to fit is the adjuster bar which moves the runner back and forth. being a universal runner kit means the adjuster bar needs bending inwards at the ends to fit between the runners fixed onto the seat. This is relatively straightforward and easy to bend with some brute force although finer adjustment may be needed in the vice to get the ends of the adjuster bar to fit fully over the catches on the runner. Trial and error with this task, bend a bit check, bend some more and check.

Once happy with that its time to drill the chassis floor.

So, we need to establish where the holes need to be drilled through the chassis floor, set the runners on the seat to their furthest back setting so the front of each runner is visible and in turn you can see where the hole in the runner is that the bolts pass through into the floor of the chassis.

Next get the floor covered in paper so you can mark where the bolts pass through the front holes.  Position the seat with the back flat against the rear bulkhead and central between the side and transmission tunnel, mark with a permanent marker the location of the front holes in the runners, relative to the chassis floor. Remove the seat.

The front holes are marked, now its a case of marking the rear runner holes. Time to get the tape measure out and measure the hole centers on the runner front to rear, translate that distance onto the paper and mark the distance. Its worth spending time on this checking distance front to rear on the runner as well distances between the runners, establish several datum's you can take measurements from when doing these to validate your markings on the paper.

Once happy, time to drill! - you will need to drill out to accept an M8 bolt - I went to 9mm to give some maneuverability in the location of the bolts through the chassis holes - some fine tuning and reaming of the holes was also needed to get a good fit but patience will prevail on this task.

Repeat for the other side and you should end up with holes correctly positioned in the floor.

Simply a case of bolting the seat runners into the floor and its all done, seats fitted!

Bolting to floor follows sequence of M8 bolt through runner, M8 nyloc nut, washer, floor, washer, nyloc nut.

[An alternative to this method to marking the chassis floor is to put a dab of paint on the end of each bolt which passes through the seat runner and position the seat into the chassis. Remove and in theory the paint will leave a mark on the floor.. tried this but did not have too much luck with it, however worth a mention as some builders have found this to work]