As long as you have folding rear seats, should be a non-issue re: having to take the seat out to squeeze wheels into the rear seat?
Deleting the Cobra logo cleans things up a ton! Looks great.
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heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe
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More seat stuff:
I got my seats from driftworks during their black friday sale for $1900 shipped. Was already planning on getting seats in the near future, but this was kind of an impulsive buy because of the deal. This also meant that I didn't get much of a choice for aesthetics and ended up with the default Nogaro that Cobra makes with the white/silverish stitching. I could have ordered them with black stitching and no logo, but that added about $300 to the cost, so I decided to do my own DIY black stitching and logo delete. Onto that first.
Started with the blacking out of the stitching. I experimented with a sharpie first (since I had a bunch on hand) and while it worked well, it also stained the vinyl, so I had to be super careful to make sure I only painted the stitching. Did like three stitches with it and then headed out to a local arts supply store. Picked up a couple of these overnighted fabric markers from Japan:
I'm glad I did this because they made the dying soo much easier. The ink did not stain the vinyl at all, so I could be super sloppy (read: fast) with it and then wipe the excess off of the vinyl. I ended up doing about 15 stitches at a time and then wiping, but I did leave a test spot on the bottom of the seat drying on the vinyl for an hour or so and it still wiped up no problem.
Kindergartener-level coloring skills:
Aaand all the excess gone:
I did both seats like this and then moved on to the center section. Since this one is made out of alcantara I had to actually be careful with what I painted and what I didn't. The stitching is fairly recessed when installed, so no need to be absolutely perfect. Here's an example of a stitch where I got a bit of marker onto the alcantara. Hard to see in pictures and pretty much impossible to notice in person unless you're explicitly looking for it:
Then came the most time consuming part. I didn't trust myself to not stain the alcantara around the embroidered logo (which would have been a lot more noticeable than around the stitching), so instead I decided to fully remove it. Started by using a seam ripper to open up the top section of the cushion:
I pulled the stitching back all the way to the sides and tied it up there, top part won't be getting stitched again.
Best technique I found for removing the logo was to go and cut up all the stitches on the back side, then use a combination of fingers and the seam ripper to pull out the silver thread from the front:
This was a somewhat tedious process that involved a lot of back and forth, as I would inevitably miss a stitch on the backside that wouldn't allow me to pull out the thread from the front. But overall not a difficult thing to do. Here's a pic in the middle of removal:
And here's what it looks like with the logo fully removed (but the alcantara still loose and the foam not pressing up on it):
I decided that instead of stitching the top back up, I would sew a couple strips of velcro on and use those to close it up. I figured that I would inevitably want to go back in so I wanted to make it serviceable. Also, that top stitch was made at the factory with the cover inside out, so there really wasn't a good way to make it look good without taking the whole thing apart.
Disclaimer: I have extremely limited sewing experience and did this all by hand, so if anyone sees anything I could have done better please do point it out.
I cut the bottom velcro strip (the one on the fabric with the white backing) into three because of the curvature of the piece. I also offset it outward quite a bit (about half the width of the strip) so that the two pieces would line up in the same spot as they had when they were stitched together before:
Here's the thing closed back up:
And the final product compared to an unmodified seat:
Think it turned out pretty good for having effectively zero textile skills!
I do want to add a small bit of velcro at the very top of the cushion (already glad I went with the velcro) because it seems to "untuck" itself after you sit in the seat. I don't think it does that because of what I did, but maybe. Regardless, a bit more velcro should keep it on no problem. This is where I want it to go:
And now onto the install. First I had to figure out how to get my stock seats out because my garage is not wide enough to get them out without scratching up the entirety of my interior. I ended up pulling the car out onto the street, removing them and then pulling it back in using the safest of temporary seats:
Honestly didn't expect it to feel as sketchy as it did, but man it was pretty bad. That street has a decent slope to it and was quite busy when I did this. I waited for the light on the corner to turn red before maneuvering, but still. I did consider asking friends with wider garages to borrow their space for a bit, but I couldn't think of a good way to transport the seats, so I settled on this. I don't think I'll take this approach in the future though lol. I'll figure out a way to move the bulky stuff around and avoid all the sketchiness instead.
With the seats out of the car, I started by test fitting the seat rails:
I made two of these out of some M8x1.25 bolts with shoulders to test fit the seat. They stick out far enough to catch on the inboard bracket, which makes it so that I don't need to take the seat rails out of the car to test the seat in the different positions. Just slot it into the inboard bracket and then screw in the two outboard bolts.
They worked great, but I didn't end up moving the seat around too much. I have a pretty short torso, so anything besides the top holes on the mounts felt too low to me. Actually, even at the highest setting, I feel like the seat is at the limit of being too low, anything more and I would be looking at making thicker bottom cushions or something.
Next came the seatbelt, which was surprisingly simple. I reused the ones from my stock seats and just removed the bits from the connector that I didn't need:
Assembled everything and put it into the car. Looks awesome:
Still need to finish up a couple things like adapting the plastic trim piece that goes over the seat rails and doing the entire passenger seat, but those are just small details. No driving impressions since I drank a couple beers during the install and didn't want to go out for a test drive.
Initial stationary impressions are that they are much more supportive than the stock seats, but appear to be a bit of an ergonomic downgrade. I already mentioned the seat being at the limit of too low for me, but I can also feel my shoulders being pushed forward quite a bit. We'll have to see how much I dislike this when my hands are outstretched to grab the steering wheel, but I can see this getting tiring on longer drives. Also noticed that the seat is no longer inline with the steering wheel (seat is moved over towards the door compared to stock), which is a bit annoying. It's not crazy though so I don't think it will bother me.
Absolutely no complaints about the fixed back part of the seat though. As mentioned above, my torso is short, but my legs are long, so I already had to sit with my seat super upright to reach all the controls comfortably. I don't think the Nogaro is any more upright than my regular seating position.
All in all, I think I like the change. Need a bunch of seat time to know for sure, but it's looking good. Also really happy with the weight savings. Stock seats weighed in at 65.5 lbs each, while Nogaro + seat base + sub strap stuff weighed in at 33 lbs each.
Back seat access is laughably limited, however. This is with the seat all the way forward:
I don't know what people are doing to get a set of wheels into the back through there, but mine would definitely not fit. Seat would absolutely have to come out. And I think there's not much to do about it either, as the seat runs into the transmission tunnel before the slider runs out of travel.
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Oh and if anyone has a source for those plastic bushings between the release bar and the manual sliders please let me know. Multiple people told me they were very fragile and I still managed to crack them a bit. Shouldn't affect functionality, as I only cracked the shoulder of the bushing, but might as well replace them if they're easy to source.
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Originally posted by Theraqa View PostI just read all 17 pages and i really enjoyed watching and reading progress of the build, you really are amazing man, that's lot of work done by just you, motivates me to do more stuff to mine as well, keep up the good work dude!
Got a quick update as well.
Brey Krause nogaro mounts arrived the other day and I mocked them up on the sliders:
Came together pretty easily, but honestly the fit and finish wasn't what I was expecting, especially considering the price. I had to pull the bolts that go up through the rails through with the nuts (guess they weren't ground down enough?), had to mess with the manual release bar springs a good amount and there were some bits missing from the kit (the spacers, but the sub strap replaces them so no big deal for me).
Also, not sure why the sub strap bar is black in pics and silver in real life. Eh, whatever, won't really be visible with the seat in place.
Anyway, overall decently happy with the mounts. They do have some issues, but they do the job.
My nogaros just landed in Indianapolis today too, so I should have them in my hands soonish. ~6 weeks wait from ordering to receiving (including having the seats made from scratch) for ~$1k discount, not mad about that at all. Still haven't figured out what to do with my stock seats though. Guess I'll just stuff them somewhere in the garage.Last edited by heinzboehmer; 12-21-2022, 02:31 PM.
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