Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg Hill
Yesterday my son Andrew and I were at my shop getting his car ready to go to Bowling Green today and he reminded me that his seat was loose. After we got every thing else done I felt of his seat and sure enough it was flopping around like you wouldn't believe. I had Andrew to remove the seat so we could take a look. The main reason for the looseness was that the seat tracks were worn out, although that wasn't the only thing. The catch that holds the seat back in place and keeps it from going forward had two or three inches play in it. We worked on the seat tracks and were able to engineer a half *** fix, but it's far from right and the seat back still has all the slop in it.
It's extremely hard to find 70-73 seat tracks and seats that are not worn out. You can cover them and make them look good, but how about the integrity of the seat and tracks themselves. I would propose aftermarket seats approved by NHRA and IHRA for stock that closely resemble the old musclecar seats. A company that I am familiar with is Procar which are sold by Jeg's and Summit. These seats may be a little lighter but they are much better as far as integrity goes. They are welded tubular steel frames and have seat tracks that are tight and have locks on both sides. I am not advocating Kirkey seats or light weight plastic racing seats but something that looks original but is much safer. I know this subject has been talked about on here before but I really feel this is a safety issue and not a performance one.
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Greg, I agree 100%. I think if you are going to allow aftermarket seats you may as well allow Kirkey's and just make the upholstery match. the Procar's aren't a racing seat, and if we are going to go aftermarket let's go for as much safety as possible.
And before anyone jumps on the "stock appearing bandwagon" too much, stop and think. Roll bars don't look stock, neither do $500 a piece front wheels showing off the lightweight front brakes, and the wheelie bars certainly give things away as well. Most of the above mentioned was done for safety, and its time us as drag racers joined the rest of the racing community in having safe seats. Hell the SCCA allows race seats in the their stockest, slowest of autocross classes ( and we're talking 50mph here). The weight savings is, in most cases, pretty much a non issue as most cars have lead in them anyways.
This is just my opinion, and has been for quite some time now. I'm sure anyone who has crashed a stocker would probably agree