The truth about GT3 seats for tall drivers

[Mike_Yi]

Originally Posted by Mike_Yi

I don't know what the hell Recaro was thinking. When they made the sliders, the bolts they included are so damn long that they come in contact with the adapter bolts. This means that you cannot slide the seat. I have to run out and get shorter bolts before I can put it in the car, which means I have to put the stock seat back in for a hardware store run.

Well, at least now I know what Recaro was thinking. They were thinking, "Hey. 20mm are pretty common, let's use those. They might be a bit long, but so what?"

I can't find any shorter than 20mm. I need like 12mm. I just got off the phone with my Dad. A friend of his suggested calling a Japanese motorcycle dealer for the cap screw.

[Mike_Yi]

I found 16mm socket head cap screws in 8mm. They work great and don't hit the other bolts at all. However, I'm on Day 3 of installing this seat, and it won't be going in today. The problem is that the BK side mounts and hitting the sides of the shell. That keeps the sliders and adapters pushed out pretty far. In fact, they are about 3/8" too far apart. The holes in the floor at 16" apart, and the closest I can get the holes in the adapters is 16 3/8". I've got to call BK tomorrow. I can, of course, grind down the part of the side mount brackets that are hitting, but I want to talk to BK before I go to that extreme. I don't know if I can even modify things enough to recover 3/8".

Needless to say, I'm not very happy with the whole process.

I did find that by mounting the seat in its full reclined position (top holes in the front), compared to mounting it in the full upright position (bottom holes in the front) makes you give up roughly 2 3/4" of leg room because of the top of the seat hitting the roll bar.

[Mike_Yi]

The Recaro SPG XL is finally in. It took my 4 days to finally get it in.

My problem with the brackets being too far apart in the rear was not because the side mount brackets were hitting the seat, but because the bolts attaching those brackets to the sliders were hitting the seat. This limited the amount of side-to-side movement on the sliders. My solution was to grind the head of the cap screws down at a 45 degree angle to provide more clearance. It did the trick. It was still tricky to get the seat in.

So the final results are that the Profi SPG XL is definitely lower than the GT3 seat. It is not, however, lower than the stock seat. This is due entirely to seat position. I had the stock seat reclined quite a bit in the car. The SPG XL with the BK mounts is reclined much more than the GT3 seat, but it is still much more upright than where I had the stock seat. In addition, I lost approximately 4" of leg room because the SPG XL is so tall that it hits the rollbar, which prevents it from sliding back all the way. I remove the rollbar padding on the driver side to get a tad bit more room.

If you are looking for a seat for driving on the road that will give you more room, and you never intend to drive it on the track, you may be able to find a seat that gets you lower. I'd personally recommend doing the foamectomy on your stock seats though. AFAIK, the GT3 and the Profi SPG XL are the only seats with shoulder harness openings high enough for taller drivers. The GT3 seat is definitely NOT designed for tall drivers though. The SPG XL is. It just doesn't work great in a car with rollbars like the Boxster.

I hope this info helps other people. I would have liked to have had this info prior to buying two seat.