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Got the call from VMC that my new seats were in! I ordered them a few weeks ago for my Intermeccanica Roadster. The comfort seats in the roadster are too wide to get the legroom I want, so I ordered up some new speedster seats. Greg and Ana were great to work with and two weeks later I have my color matched heated seats! My question for the group...Has anyone elevated the front of their seats to get more comfort? I am planning to fab a bracket to raise the front 2", creating a pitch to the seat. Being a fixed bucket, I feel like this wont change the ergonomics of my lower back posture at all, I am thinking zero gravity chairs they charge a fortune for. Anyone try this and have any feedback? On my living room floor its WAY more comfortable having the angle. Greg mentioned some people add some shims but I am thinking more dramatic pitch. AFF13DD9-6AD4-40BF-A52F-68B5A7E43BE1_1_201_a60E77C59-73AC-488D-A452-6F170951E445_1_201_a639ADDB7-DE06-422A-9145-904F624FE532_1_201_a5B5DBFE4-4ECF-4247-9E76-BEBB621A43EAJust had the car tuned to perfection and brakes refreshed for summer fun!  Also added a nice stereo set up, it's all coming together!

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@benster, I know that @Stan Galat has done exactly what you're planning, so hopefully he'll chime in here.

I've got to walk out the door, but I've done this with several different seats. My advice is to keep in mind that raising the front without dropping the back will make you sit pretty high in the car (defeating the purpose).

Get the back of the seat as low as you can go, and raise the front to suit. The trick is in doing this and keeping your adjustable tracks - they have to go parallel with the floor, not with the seat bottom - else moving them fore and aft also moves the seat up and down. It's far, far easier to bolt them in a fixed position than to try for seat sliders.

I have had the same seats in two Spyders. In the first car, they were mounted flat to the floor. I the second, I added an inch and a half lift on the front, and about 3/8" in the rear. This allowed me to actually adjust my crotch straps on the five-point belts. I'm definitely more comfortable tilted back a bit, my thighs are better supported and I feel more "in" the car.

All of this depends on your torso and leg length though. In both of my cars I did not install sliders, the seats are fixed. But the car is for me and me only. I did also make a set of 4-5 inch pedal extensions for the wife, though! She has yet to use them.

A Speedster has a slightly higher cowl and windshield so you are afforded a bit more room to work with.

My seats came with those sliders. I wanted to be as low as possible, (I have a Spyder) so I ditched them and bolted the rear of my seats to the floor and raised the front with spacers.

I wanted to minimize the holes drilled in the floor, so I mounted some flat stock to the bottom with a few holes in the rear for future adjustments. I just had to drill two new holes for the front since I was using the existing rear holes. This leaves me with just two unused holes, but having some holes in the floorboard is good for drainage.

Seat 1seat 2seat 3

Maybe one day I'll replace that stack of spacers with a nice peace of wood or aluminum. I also did the same to the passenger seat.

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Last edited by Carlos G

I had 914 seats and the glides that Greg shows were pretty neat.  Remove them from the seat, get them positioned on the car's floor where you want them, anchor them down and then the seat can be slid onto the glides from the front, zip-zap.  

If you need to remove the seats, just glide them all the way forward where a spring-loaded tab keeps them from falling off of the track, push the tab spring up to release the seat and push it forward off the track and lift it out of the car.

Pretty slick.

I love this group. I'll have the car back today and will start the fun. I dig the idea of mounting direct to floor, at 6'3" I will take every bit of space I can get. I did reach out to IM to see if I could purchase complete seats before going to VMC, I was unsuccessful. IM has helped me in the past, but I also figured a local pick up option would be smarter than shipping bulky items from out of country, so I didn't follow up. VMC HQ is 45 min away.... I Will reach out to IM about the tracks they make if I don't have a homemade solution worked out. Thanks everyone!

It's completely possible to have the tracks, just not very easy or useful. If Ben is 6'3", I'd recommend just doing what Carlos did. At the very best, tracks add an inch of overall height to the bottom of the seat.

Al is right, your line of sight is (obviously) reduced the lower you go in the car- but this is vastly superior to having the top of the windshield at eye level. A person with a long torso WANTS to be sitting on the floor.

@benster, it's just as well that IM didn't want to sell you seats or tracks. You have a pan-based car, and the seating area and mounting points on an IM car are wider than what you've got. Their setup won't work in your car.

I'm using the tracks and comfy seats from VMC in a pan based IM. I put the seats in the car and figured out how much I wanted the fronts to be raised. I bought longer, hardened bolts to accommodate the height. I bought some stainless spacers that gave me the height I wanted. I ground off the short bolts that came on the tracks and replaced them with the longer bolts and spacers (with a fender washer on the seat base side). It's been working fine for me. Good luck!

Ahhhh dang it. Been doing the mock up the past few hours on the passenger seat ( I have a canyon drive this weekend and don’t want to be without driver seat).  After a lot of shimming and moving etc I got it pretty comfy. Then I took a step back and realized how bad the speedster seat looks in the roadster. The reason is the reclined top. It’s far more bulk than the speedster top. It looks pretty bad in my opinion. I decided to walk away ron it for the night and try fresh eyes in the morning. I had the pictured seats in my last beck, can someone telL me what style these are? Even better, anyone want to trade for some brand new heated speedster seats?? Dang it. Maybe tomorrow will bring forth new ideas.

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@benster posted:

@Stan Galat my car is the IM roadster, it’s a tube frame. I just bought the seats from VMC is all. I got some great input here. Car comes back to me today I’m excited to mess woth all the options. I’ll most likely go fixed position on the floor. In the rare instance someone has to drive it and they can’t reach the pedals, a pillow will do!

I'm so sorry for misunderstanding. If you've got a tube-frame IM, you have a lot of possibilities.

The cheapest option (by far) that looks "right" in a Roadster is the EMPI 62-2960 - they look a lot like Henry's Roadster seats, or a Procar 90 series. Mounted directly to seat sliders, they ride higher than you'd like, but still sit pretty low for a spring seat.

I have a set in my car (my third set of seats in search of something that would satisfy my wife and I both) - her's is unmodified (other than being recovered in leather), mine is heavily modified to sit very, very low in the car, and still use sliders. I completely remade the bottom frame of my seat to actually recess the tracks into the frame, and cut down the cushion. Upholstery was not easy and not cheap, but I made both seats match. and feel good to both Jeanie and me.

Both seat bases are pitched back aggressively, but if you look at the base of mine, and compare it to the base of hers, you can see what I did.

Comfort%20Seats

What I had said in another thread (about a year ago) was this:

"The passenger's seat is "as delivered", with a set of seat sliders bolted to the bottom. It sits surprisingly low for a spring seat.

My seat (however) is so low that I recessed a track into the cushion on either side of the center section (in the bolsters) so that the bottom of the springs in the back of the base are flush with the floor, but the seat slider remains functional. The back support grazes (well.. maybe "drags" is a better word) the carpet when the seat is all the way back, but the sliders are on an angle so that the seat rises as it moves forward. The springs are all there, which makes an enormous difference in comfort.

I cut down the foam in the seat bottom so that it was about 3/4 of an inch thick at the junction of the seat and seat-back, and tapered it upward towards the front (which was left intact. I had to buy a 18" long serrated knife on Amazon to get a nice cut. The upholstery shop had to add 2" of foam to the bottom of the seat-back to close the gap created when I cut the cushion down.

My butt is about an inch and a half (or less) off the floor in my normal driving position. I was able to get as low as I was with Fibersteel seat shells, mounted directly to the floor. I also pitched the seat base pretty aggressively, as pitching back makes an enormous difference for me being comfortable. The recline adjustment on the seat-back allows me to fine tune the fit depending on if the driving is aggressive or interstate.

My wife (5'5" ish) sits like a very small child or a 90 year old woman in the driver's seat. The top of the wheel is roughly even with her forehead."

The takeaway of the last paragraph is that remaking the driver's seat so that it could slide was probably just an exercise in proving I could, rather than doing anything useful. Bolting an unmodified (but tipped) 62-2960 seat to the floor would have provided 90% of the comfort at 10% of the cost.

I have more details (but not as many as I thought) on a thread I started to detail my 2019/2020 winter projects. The link is here, and the seat part of the program is on Page 4.

Good luck.

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I had roadster seat from IM, the headrest was way below my shoulders I tried the speedster seats and while comfortable I could not envision driving 12 hours in one eventually I settled on Recaro's they fit me andthat is what matters in the end and I drove 12 hours on my maiden voyage without any issues.

Henry's guy did a bang up job doing up in Spinneybeck leather.

In the end the quest for good seating varies with the body styles of course and personal taste as always, enjoy the hunt.



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Last edited by IaM-Ray
@IaM-Ray posted:

I had roadster seat from IM, the headrest was way below my shoulders I tried the speedster seats and while comfortable I could not envision driving 12 hours in one eventually I settled on Recaro's they fit me andthat is what matters in the end and I drove 12 hours on my maiden voyage without any issues.

Henry's guy did a bang up job doing up in Spinneybeck leather.

In the end the quest for good seating varies with the body styles of course and personal taste as always, enjoy the hunt.



Those look an awful lot like the “Sport Seats” in Porsches. FWIW, they’re probably 2-3” wider than the Beck Speedster seats I have in my Spyder, but less comfortable. For some reason the left-side bolster in my 968 has a “pressure point” on my left thigh that gets uncomfortable after 45 minutes or so.
I overhang both sides on my Spyder seats, but I find them all-day comfortable.  But then, I rode one of these from Milan to the Isle of Man and back and you wouldn’t believe how comfortable that seat turned out to be.
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