STS Miata - Project: Stronger Faster Lighter
- Thread starter aMaff
- Start date
they don't, but seats + sliders (which actually weigh a good bit) + about 28" total of 1" steel angle iron + cover + hardware should add up to be over 20 lbs
Really? I believe I've read that the sliders are just about 5#. I've been looking at the Ultrashield Rally Pros for my Miata, and those seats come in right around 20#, so I'd still need 5#of ballast using stock sliders, and I might just bolt the passenger seat to the floor as low and far back as possible. If so, that one would need more.
I looked at those too, but these came in about $100 cheaper each. I'm pretty sure you won't need to bolt it to the floor. If you do it right the stock sliders are plenty good.
Are these the 'Economy' seats? I was looking at those. Just over $100, plus $90 for a cover? The Ultrashields can be had for $250 without much shopping around. I'm wondering if our AR sponsor might be able to get a hookup on these as well.
www.ebay.com
the Kirkey seats can be found in abundance there. Not so much with the Ultrashield ones though.
the Kirkey seats can be found in abundance there. Not so much with the Ultrashield ones though.
They're not the economy seats, they're the "Pro Street Drag Seats". The economy's are even cheaper.
I just went down to summit and picked them up:
http://store.summitracing.com/partdetail.asp?autofilter=1&part=KIR-41700&N=700+115&autoview=sku
http://store.summitracing.com/partdetail.asp?part=KIR-41711
These are the 'economy drag' seats:
http://store.summitracing.com/egnsearch.asp?N=700+115+300871&D=300871
Though cheaper, they have that 100% flat back and bottom which doesn't really look comfortable at all.
EDIT: For reference, the picture of the pro street drag seats are out of date. They look like what I posted below, not what they have on the website.
Well, I kinda sorta caught a break tonight and had some time to do a little more work with the seats. The passenger side to be a little more specific. I must have lost my stock passenger side bracket when I moved, because I couldn't find that thing anywhere. I picked one up from a local miata-graveyard type yesterday and went to town tonight. Putting together the seat bracket is pretty simple and just requires drilling 4 holes in the angle iron. Make sure you measure correctly as with the 2nd one I was just a hair off. The dremmel made short work of correcting that error.
Pics:
The bracket as it sits stock. I just used the 4 stock holes at the ends of the top 'rails' for the brackets
Painted:
You can see the front angle iron through the anti-sub strap hole. It lines up pretty much perfectly with that front crease. The rear of the seat sits nicely on the rear bracket for support.
Pics:
The bracket as it sits stock. I just used the 4 stock holes at the ends of the top 'rails' for the brackets
Painted:
You can see the front angle iron through the anti-sub strap hole. It lines up pretty much perfectly with that front crease. The rear of the seat sits nicely on the rear bracket for support.
These aren't the cheapie ones, which were the only ones I've ever had experience with. These things are solid dude.
Paint? No powdercoating? That's bush league.
haha thanks guy
so I finally got that postage scale to weight some stuff, and we got the other seat bolted in tonight. Pics of that to come.
Weights:
- 50 lbs - Roll bar + mounting hardware
- 30 lbs x 2 - Forzas & bracketry
+ 25.4 lbs x 2 - Ballasted Kirkey
========
-59.2 lbs
So I overshot my estimate based on the weight that Mark from Kirk racing gave me on the roll bar. In either case, that's still a fairly significant weight savings
. Now for the power steering and battery 
Here's a few pictures of the install:
Rear of the seat. The angle iron is butted right up on the bottom of the seat here:
Front of the seat. Angle iron again providing support:
Securely mounted ballast (2.5 lbs + hardware) (Todd, this answers your earlier question):
Mounting complete. The outer middle row bolts are threaded directly into the stock slider:
Installed:
A few numbers:
The stock bracket w/ angle iron bolted in was 7.85 lbs. The 'Naked' Kirkey is 12.15 lbs. Once the seat is bolted down (6 bolts, assorted washers, nuts, etc) and the cover's on, the whole thing (including the mounting bolts to the chassis) weighs 22.95 lbs. We added that 2.5 lb weight to the bottom to bring the whole shebang to 25.4 lbs.
Any questions?
Weights:
- 50 lbs - Roll bar + mounting hardware
- 30 lbs x 2 - Forzas & bracketry
+ 25.4 lbs x 2 - Ballasted Kirkey
========
-59.2 lbs
So I overshot my estimate based on the weight that Mark from Kirk racing gave me on the roll bar. In either case, that's still a fairly significant weight savings
. Now for the power steering and battery Here's a few pictures of the install:
Rear of the seat. The angle iron is butted right up on the bottom of the seat here:
Front of the seat. Angle iron again providing support:
Securely mounted ballast (2.5 lbs + hardware) (Todd, this answers your earlier question):
Mounting complete. The outer middle row bolts are threaded directly into the stock slider:
Installed
:
A few numbers:
The stock bracket w/ angle iron bolted in was 7.85 lbs. The 'Naked' Kirkey is 12.15 lbs. Once the seat is bolted down (6 bolts, assorted washers, nuts, etc) and the cover's on, the whole thing (including the mounting bolts to the chassis) weighs 22.95 lbs. We added that 2.5 lb weight to the bottom to bring the whole shebang to 25.4 lbs.
Any questions?
Last edited:
Plan for next event: no pants. Sleeveless t-shirt or wife-beater up top. No socks, and shave the soles of my shoes for a few extra ounces.
Hawt dayum, that's how we roll in Gawgia ya'll!
Yeah... not happening lol. They're really not comfortable to drive in.
We got the manual rack swapped in this weekend and lost about 21 lbs (just over 20 lbs of hardware, give or take 1 lb for PS fluid) which is exciting, but less than 'advertised' by the masses. No real pictures because, well, it's just not that sexy . Old busted off, new hotness on. Unfortunately, no driving impressions yet because A) the alignment is going to be EFFED, and B) I'm waiting for a couple dust boots for the outer tie rod ends to come in from MazdaSpeed before I button everything back up. I'm calling one of our local awesome alignment places tomorrow morning to set up an appointment for next Thursday for the alignment.
However, it's not all bad news. 20 lbs off of the nose of the car, ahead of the front axle line, is never a bad thing. Basically, we pulled the pump, reservoir, cooling loop and the bracket. The 2 big ticket weight items were the pump and the lump-o-metal bracket that holds it to the block. The PS rack itself was actually a couple of lbs heavier, so we lost weight just in that as well.
Now that we're mostly done w/ the weight reduction (well, battery... but whatever) we can start to make her move a little better. Granted, taking my 160k mile power steering pump off has to help at least a little...). This will be my first engine rebuild so I'm doing a ton of research. I know I can't overbore because the 1st factory over is .025, and the ST (well, stock really) allowance is .020, so that's out. It's really just going to be parts bin balancing the rotating assembly, getting the tolerances as tight as the FSM allows, decking the head and, if the FSM has a spec for it, the block, and get the head re-worked. The biggest question mark for me is what I want to do with the head. I'm still in the planning phases of that. It's going to come down to what the biggest bang / $$ is. If I can just get it pressure tested and some seals replaced pretty cheap if necessary, I'll go that route. The $ on a crazy ass valve job / replace everything in the head idea may be a bit more than I'm willing to spend for what won't amount to a huge gain on the B6.
I bought an engine a couple months back, but really haven't had time to do much on it. I have torn the head apart and will start rebuilding the hydraulic lifters here at some point. I borrowed a hoist to get it off the crate on the floor to drain the oil, and to get it onto the engine stand (totally worth the hassle of going to pick up and re-building the hoist in the garage). After this I'll start tearing everything apart and see what kind of situation I'm looking at. I'll probably have everything acid dipped so I can start 100% fresh and not have to worry about a buttload of contaminants.
FWIW, this will be my 1st rebuild, so I'm really stoked, so there will likely be a s*** ton of pictures of that process once we begin. For now, you'll have to settle with this
. Old busted off, new hotness on. Unfortunately, no driving impressions yet because A) the alignment is going to be EFFED, and B) I'm waiting for a couple dust boots for the outer tie rod ends to come in from MazdaSpeed before I button everything back up. I'm calling one of our local awesome alignment places tomorrow morning to set up an appointment for next Thursday for the alignment.However, it's not all bad news. 20 lbs off of the nose of the car, ahead of the front axle line, is never a bad thing. Basically, we pulled the pump, reservoir, cooling loop and the bracket. The 2 big ticket weight items were the pump and the lump-o-metal bracket that holds it to the block. The PS rack itself was actually a couple of lbs heavier, so we lost weight just in that as well.
Now that we're mostly done w/ the weight reduction (well, battery... but whatever) we can start to make her move a little better. Granted, taking my 160k mile power steering pump off has to help at least a little...). This will be my first engine rebuild so I'm doing a ton of research. I know I can't overbore because the 1st factory over is .025, and the ST (well, stock really) allowance is .020, so that's out. It's really just going to be parts bin balancing the rotating assembly, getting the tolerances as tight as the FSM allows, decking the head and, if the FSM has a spec for it, the block, and get the head re-worked. The biggest question mark for me is what I want to do with the head. I'm still in the planning phases of that. It's going to come down to what the biggest bang / $$ is. If I can just get it pressure tested and some seals replaced pretty cheap if necessary, I'll go that route. The $ on a crazy ass valve job / replace everything in the head idea may be a bit more than I'm willing to spend for what won't amount to a huge gain on the B6.
I bought an engine a couple months back, but really haven't had time to do much on it. I have torn the head apart and will start rebuilding the hydraulic lifters here at some point. I borrowed a hoist to get it off the crate on the floor to drain the oil, and to get it onto the engine stand (totally worth the hassle of going to pick up and re-building the hoist in the garage). After this I'll start tearing everything apart and see what kind of situation I'm looking at. I'll probably have everything acid dipped so I can start 100% fresh and not have to worry about a buttload of contaminants.
FWIW, this will be my 1st rebuild, so I'm really stoked, so there will likely be a s*** ton of pictures of that process once we begin. For now, you'll have to settle with this
Last edited:
You might want to check that overbore again. IIRC first overbore is .25mm (~.010"). (thumb)
Anymore pictures of the "new" engine to show how it looks right now in the head?
snap...................I need to looky at that... The rulebook definitely says .020", so if the factory overbore is in mm, that'd rock lol. *grabs FSM on way out door to work)
Pictures of the head, or do you mean pics of the block w/ the head off? Right now I hand-tightened 4 head studs so I could use those hooks to hang it from the hoist. I SHOULD have it on the stand tonight.
if I can have it... LOLafter you build this one, i have one in my garage you can build too
Yes so I can be depressed with how much gunk is likely in my current engine.
lol there was some nasty s*** in 1 of the plug wells on this one, so I wouldn't feel too bad if I were you...
I'm about 99% sure that the Hollis Miata got overbored, so there's got to be something legal there.
