heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[Bry5on]

All the options are terrible! Just go with Porsche buckets 🤪

[Obioban]

SPG XL’s are a total non starter with 3 points.

[Sharocks]

SPG XL's even if you're a slimmer waist - I'm a 31-32 depending on the holidays hehe.

PP's have the harness holes too low and the side support is meh. They're just easy to get in and out of and they look good.

[Bry5on]

You going to run electric or manual sliders? Adding my vote here for going electric and retaining memory. It’s so nice, plus you can just set memory 3 to your rear seat access position

Post the L-R offset you calculate/use here! I’ll have to measure what I did for the sportsters but I’ve got another 5mm room to go inward or so, and the devil on my shoulder has considered designing another seat frame to use it. Also remember that the farther inward it is, the tougher it is to get in/out of the car. Especially with a bucket, which can really strain your left knee. This is the reason I sold my Z3 coupe - knee pain from getting in/out of the bucket, and I only fit in it with a bucket.

[George Hill]

Are you just going to run the stock seat belt buckle? I've got a buddy with ABEs and the buckle is laced through the side hole. Its fine once you get in, but it sure is annoying getting in and out.

[heinzboehmer]

I've officially given up on the Nogaros

I've been driving the car around more these days and comfort has really begun to be a problem. Years of tweaking the seating position plus the custom seat cushions have made them bearable in most cases, but it's clear that the seats are designed for a different body shape.

So, I've decided to give the Pole Position ABEs another shot. Light, 3 point compatible, quick fit compatible and don't cost $15k like the 997 GT3 buckets do . The only sticking point is the height of the harness holes. I've sat in them before and know it's close, but wanted a way to quantify it before comitting.

zivagolee let me sit in his with my helmet and HANS on and we grabbed some scans. Yep, it's close:




It's technically fine, but I kinda hate how little margin there is.

Howeeever, that scan has me sitting on ~50 mm of street-spec comfy cushions, so let's see what happens when I sit directly on the seat shell:




Ohhhh yeah, that's much more like it. Harnesses fully rest on the bottom of the harness holes without the seat cushions, which is exactly what I want to see.

My plan is to make myself a second set of thinner track cushions and swap them out when needed. I'll have to play around with thicknesses to balance comfort and harness height, but it should be totally fine. It's not like I'm doing endurance racing in this thing.

Seats ordered, but it'll likely be 2-3 months before they're in my hands.


One thing I did learn about the PP ABEs is that there are no good seat bracket options that are compatible with the BMW sliders. Brey Krause makes a generic set that should work, but I don't want generic, I want a set of brackets that maximizes the use of the available space and gets me as close to inline with the steering wheel as possible. Sounds like I'm just gonna have to do it myself

Since I had the scanner out, I went ahead and scanned my car with the Nogaros to use as a reference:



It's funny seeing from this angle just how far out of line the steering wheel is from the seat. Custom brackets should help with that!

I should be able to tuck the driver's seat closer to the transmission tunnel, to get some better alignment. I might even angle it slightly towards the center of the car to make it feel less offset. This will for sure restrict how far the seat can move forward, and thus, how easy it is to get into the back, but that should be alright. I can design the passenger seat bracket to prioritize a larger opening behind it when slid all the way forward, which will help a lot. I don't go back there too often these days, but it's nice to have easier access.

Anyway, will be anxiously waiting for seats to arrive. My shoulders and upper back are gonna love this change.

[heinzboehmer]

Wow, I went through all 97 pages and learned a lot! Thanks for the sharing your adventures with us.

Glad the documenting was useful!

[MeMyselfM4]

Wow, I went through all 97 pages and learned a lot! Thanks for the sharing your adventures with us.

[Ramage]

Hello Heinzboehmer,

I was wondering if you are sharing this repair file for people to print themselves and use?

It is posted - https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/m...317#post331317

[sunny3o]

Hello Heinzboehmer,

I was wondering if you are sharing this repair file for people to print themselves and use?

Quick side project.

A bit more involved than just gluing the piece on, but it results in a super solid mechanical interface.

Here's an impact driver hanging from the replacement tab. Note that there is no adhesive present here:



In hindsight, running the above test was kinda dumb. If it failed, I would have had to source another pillar cover. It survived though, so we're good

For the final install, I did add a bit of epoxy in between the replacement tab and the pillar cover, for max strength. Seems to have worked out great!

[heinzboehmer]

But then you have you have a lookup to account for DST !

Yeah, it gets complicated FAST, ha.

You can always make an assumption about the TZ given the currently set time, if one exists. This is how the BlueBus does it on cars with Nav, where the GPS date and time are broadcast.

I saw that part in your code. Dug around (for an admittedly short amount of time) and wasn't able to query the set time over I Bus. It looks like only the Nav sends this data out?

BUT If you really wanted to get frisky you could use BLE and an App to just grab that data off your phone instead of via the Gauge.S

Definitely the easier (and likely cleaner) route. I'm a terrible app developer though, so decided to stick to what I know instead of having the robots build me some slop app that only works half the time

[t3ddftw]

Setting the timezone and DST is kinda clunky with the CD53, but it works just fine. If I'm bored one day, I might add latitude, longitude and date to the D/I Bus relay packet, then spend (probably an unnecessary amount of) time coming up with an algorithm that can efficiently do a lookup on a world timezone map and set everything automatically.

But then you have you have a lookup to account for DST !

You can always make an assumption about the TZ given the currently set time, if one exists. This is how the BlueBus does it on cars with Nav, where the GPS date and time are broadcast.

If you own an iPhone, the (v1) BlueBus can sync time off that via AT command.

BUT If you really wanted to get frisky you could use BLE and an App to just grab that data off your phone instead of via the Gauge.S

[Arclitgold]

Finally caught back up on this thread and holy moly it delivers. You all are amazing engineers and truly my people

[heinzboehmer]

... but how will you reset the trip?

FYI:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5614502

Thanks for the link! Was gonna design my own, but glad I don't have to now.

Weirdly, only the "forward" adjustment broke. Turning the knob CCW and pushing it in still works. But yes, I need to actually fix this at some point, the auto time was just me being lazy. Writing some code on the couch was more appealing than taking the cluster apart at that moment for some reason.

[Obioban]

Ha. Damn it.

Shows how often I use the trip :P

Back in the day, I'm pretty sure my Intravee's set the clock based on GPS time.