Hi! I own a mk1 mx5, and I’m looking into getting some new seats for it.
I have been working on the interior for a while and I’ve just about got it to where I want it, the only piece of the puzzle missing is the seats.
I currently have no roll bar so I cannot use harnesses. While a roll bar is on the list, I’d still rather not use harnesses, as the car is only ever used on the road.
Has anyone used bucket seats with the regular seatbelts? What seats would you recommend? I like the look of the sparco r100 as budget is also fairly limited. Any other input or advice is more than welcome
Bucket seats are designed to be used with a full harness seat belt. They have slots to accommodate the harness to ensure it fits tight to the body giving total protection, if using a standard seat belt it will only touch the sides of the seat holding the belt away from the body and a gap which not give a snug fitting and potential movement in an accident. You can get bucket seats with lower sides that would be okay with standard belts.
Yes the gap caused by a bucket seat was a concern of mine, that’s why the r100 stood out as it looked like this problem may not occur due to the shape of the seat. I’ve seen some seats that would be perfect for use with the standard belt, but they cost a fortune!
If you’re not going to track the car, I genuinely don’t see any point in fitting bucket seats. It’s a bit of a waste where you could be spending it on other areas of the car.
The same as the roll bar. Do you really need one for a road car? Or just take it on a track and enjoy it.
I used an old Ligier G-Hold seat for a while, and it worked fine with normal seatbelts for road us. But the seat was uncomfortable. I once drove it from Belfast to Castle Coombe sitting on little more than 10mm of foam padding.
