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Last page update was 24/04/08

Seating

In a car like the Fury, you can get away with having no seat at all and sit on the floor. Most cheap kit car seats are little more than bits of wood with a layer of thin foam and a covering of vinyl, often not even fixed in place. It is the driver and harnesses that stop them moving about. At the other end of the scale, there are professionally trimmed leather seats and carbon fibre moulded race/bucket seats. There are also many kart style seats in various materials. The main factor limiting the choice of seat is usually the available space between the side of the chassis and the centre tunnel in the car. The Fury is particularly good in this respect as the centre tunnel is narrow and the cockpit fairly wide.

Both the passenger and drivers side cockpit floor have the same dimensions. Although the Fury cockpit is relatively large by kitcar standards, it is still a struggle to fine to find one that fits both the car an me. The measurements are shown in this image and it should be noted that the cockpit side walls are pretty much vertical.

My chosen seating solution is going to have to provide some serious upper body support. My experience of track days to date, suggests that this is required to reduce the strain on your stomach and back muscles and to protect your hips from all the lateral motion. Something like this  would be nice but a bit out of my price range.

The key issue for me is that my hip bones require a seat at least 390mm wide.

Seat Fixings

Most people seem to bolt the seats without runners directly through the floor, using large washers or load distribution plates. This is fine for SVA and it is the safety belts that take most of the stress.

Using adjustable runners on the drivers seat will help to distribute the load on the mounting points though. Something like this is what I have in mind: seat runners .

Drivers Seat

I wanted to fit an adjustable drivers seat (in terms of forward/backward movement), so that others can drive the car comfortably. I've been offered some test drives in some stunning performance cars but had to refuse because I couldn't reach the pedals and was unable to move the seat.

Seat Options

Fisher Sports Cars

Fisher Sports Cars  sell a high back GRP seat in various colours but mainly supply them in black.


Seat measurements. This is not wide enough for me.
Typical installation.
Back view.

JK Composites

This company sells quality GRP seats


Seat measurements.
Their narrow seat is still too wide for the Fury.
Fixing instructions.

Fluke Motorsport

From Fluke Motorsport , these carbon fibre seats are simply too expensive for me.

MK Sports Cars

From MK Sports Cars . I don't have any measurements for this seat yet other than that they are 40cm wide at bottom, 42cm wide at the shoulder and 84cm high.

Stylus Sports Cars

From Stylus Sports Cars . These are the right size and my favourite so far.

Tillett

Tillett do a large range of seats, many of which are suitable for the Fury, given its fairly large cockpit size.

There is plenty of information on the Tillett seats on their web site but I talked through the options with Malcolm at MSAR Safety  and decided on the W2 because it floor mounts. It isn't a full height seat with head restraint though, so I'm going to have to put a helmet pad behind the seat, mounted onto the roll-hoops. It requires a floor mounting frame and the one I've used also incorporates fore/aft adjustable runners.

The Tillet Blackhawk is an amazing seat weighing in 3.5kg but at over £600 are too expensive me. They do do a Westfield version which is cheaper though.

Harnesses

The normal Fury chassis has fixing points for 4-point harnesses but for another £50, I'm having mounts for 6-point harnesses fitted. I really don't like the typical 4-point harnesses found in sports cars. They are awkward to reach and adjust and in trying to get the chest straps suitably tight, the waist straps are pulled upwards. 6-point harneses solve this problem and I want to find some that are easy to do up, undo and adjust.

I want all of the straps to be pulled in towards the buckle to tighten them. This usually means normal adjusters on the waist straps, as opposed to reverse adjusters (which you pull down and away to tighten and are really difficult to do up once in the seat). Reverse adjusters are more common as the buckle positioning is less dependent on the strap lengths.

Typically harnesses are 3" at the shoulder and 2" at the lap and leg straps. Safety is high up my list of considerations so they have to be FIA and SFI (USA safety standards) approved. Both Luke and Willans can make custom length harnesses on request and don't charge a lot more for this service.

Suppliers of harnesses include:

You can get either bolt-in or clip-in harnesses, the latter using a ring bolt screwed into the chassis fitting. The clip-in ones are easier to take them out should you need to clean/dry them.

With hindsight: I went for the Schroth Profi II - 6 harnesses from MSAR Safety  and these really were an excellent choice as they are easy to use and very easy to adjust correctly.

Harnesses Mounts

The 2006 Fury chassis features 6-point harness mounts (if a requested option). The mounts have an unusual thread size which is 7/16 UNF.

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