heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[heinzboehmer]

Also finally finished up the side project with the seats. Made a cushion to replace the towels that can be seen in previous posts. Decided to make it have adjustable lumbar support and a removable cover.

Started with planning out the cuts:




Since I had now used a sewing machine for more than just an hour, I figured I would be able to lay everything out directly onto the fabric. Clearly that was not the case:




For the next one, I decided to go back to the trusty CAD. Came out much neater:



For the inflatable lumbar bit, I went on eBay and got some super cheap inflatable lumbar cushions:



Removed the outer fabric layer and was left with a pretty flat inflatable bladder:



Test fitting on the fabric. Smaller than the face of the cushion, but should work well:



And now for a quick prototype made with velcro and masking tape:



Here's the range of inflation for the lumbar part:




Getting everything sewn was pretty straight forward. Starting to get kinda decent at this:




Also attached the inflatable bladder to the fabric by the top corners so it wouldn't move around too much:



Here's the structural part of the cushion done:



Next came making the outer dinamica cover. Turns out dinamica is made in ~a million colors, so it was hard to find a perfect match. I did find a vendor that stocked a color that was super close, but a yard of the stuff was $120, so I decided against it. Ended up going with another vendor that had much more reasonable prices, even though they didn't stock the exact shade of black that Cobra uses.

Meh, close enough:



Laid out the cushions onto the fabric and traced around them. Used masking tape because I was afraid of the silver marker bleeding through:




Not super obvious in the pics, but one of the cushions is taller than the other. This is because my GF said that the back cushion pushed her head forward a bit too much when set at my height, so I made a slightly shorter one for her.

Here's the finished product and how it fits over the cushion with the inflatable bit:





Since the cushions were different sizes, I used the pseudo-embroidering feature on the sewing machine to label them. This one is labeled "D" for "driver":



Some more lumbar range testing:




Looks kinda lopsided in the pics, but I think that's just because I didn't fully seat it against the seat. It's much more even in real life.

And here's the finished product:



Color match is pretty good and it definitely looks less stupid than with the towels. Still not as cool looking as how the seats come from the factory, but I can make them look normal in a few seconds, so whatever. Was also able to stuff the inflating pump thing into the substrap hole on the bottom of the seat, so no weird bits sticking out from under the bottom cushions.

Honestly this whole thing turned out pretty good. Super happy with how much more comfortable they are for street driving.

[mrgizmo04]

Assuming I understand what you are doing to regain strut travel, you will extend the shaft below mount, which will unload the spring, which will result in lower ride height, a bit more camber due to further travel in the arc and some toe out in front, concurrently resulting in more + rake and some toe in in rear, even if the shaft within the cardboard cutout stays in the same place. It will also result in more droop rather than bump, unless you shift the bottom spring collar up.

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[heinzboehmer]

Finally installed some Turner street camber plates I bought off of Bry5on a while back. Don't exactly have a need for more camber (yet), but I did want to regain a bit of strut travel.

Wanted to keep my alignment as close to how it was before as possible, so I made these quick cardboard templates. Not super precise, but also much better than going by eye:



Since the strut has two axes to move around in, I added some masking tape to the strut tower and marked the position of the templates in two roughly orthogonal spots. Also took the opportunity to clean things up:




Install was fairly uneventful. Took about 30 min per side and didn't hit any snags. Spent longer getting the stupid dust boot in place than I did installing the plates.

One thing I did try was swapping the location of the spacer that Turner provides. Instructions say to install between strut washer and camber plate, but I figured I'd be able to regain even more strut travel if I put it on top of the camber plate instead.

This is the spacer below the plate:



And this is with it above:



I test fitted one plate with the spacer above it and wasn't too comfortable with how close the strut washer was to the solid (black) sleeve of the plate. Here's some shitty pics of the clearance:




As you can (not) see, there's barely any space between the parts. I was concerned that they would interfere when in use, so I decided to install the spacer how Turner wants you to. Significantly more clearance that way:



Anyway, CAD templates worked well and I was able to get stuff into pretty much the same spot as before:







Haven't been driving the car around too much lately, but I'll be going to an autox at Sonoma next weekend. Hopefully these things make it so that I'm in the bump stops less.

[heinzboehmer]

You’re in this far, you should just make yourself a single insert to replace the three piece thing. You could also match the horizontal/arc stitching of the rear seats while you’re at it..

Ha, we'll see. Part of the reason why I want a separate lumbar cushion is so I can put an inflatable bladder thing into it and have adjustable lumbar support. I guess I could do it with the big cushion too, but I kinda just want to drive the car now instead of fighting against a sewing machine lol.

[Bry5on]

You’re in this far, you should just make yourself a single insert to replace the three piece thing. You could also match the horizontal/arc stitching of the rear seats while you’re at it..