Im curious about the negatives of using an older FIA regulated seat (Sparco, for example) for a track day.
If one just wanted more support from their seat and came across a cheap, used race seat, with no plans to [anytime soon] race with a wheel-to-wheel sort of organization, is this a bad idea?
There is very little reason to fear an old seat that appears in good condition. An awful lot of the "out of date" rules are written by manufacturers that need to sell new ones to stay in business.
Typically (or it should be) any forward motion of the driver is restrained by the belts, not the seat. Under acceleration, typically the seat is pinched between the driver and hard supports. Only in cornering might seat construction/integrity be a concern. I'd inspect the mounting points on the seat and pass if any are elongated or oversized.
TurnerX19 said:There is very little reason to fear an old seat that appears in good condition. An awful lot of the "out of date" rules are written by manufacturers that need to sell new ones to stay in business.
I've always wondered about that myself, for seatbelts. If one car sits in the sun on a trailer for five years, versus one parked in a garage, the belt condition is likely very different, but it's always a date-related thing, not condition, but I'm off-topic now.
Personally I wouldn't have a problem using a seat for some time past the expiration date if I knew the history, knew it had been parked inside out of the sun, and had never been crashed.
That's different from buying a used seat with an unknown history off ebay from a stranger.
If it fits, it ships. In other words, if it holds your keister firmly in place through turns, it is still very much to your benefit.
Steel tube framed seat, or some sort of plastic frame? I'd trust the steel one because it's easier to see rust or cracks in important places. Plastic, I'm not sure.
I'm a bit prejudiced against plastic anything that's important in a car. It deteriorates with time and temperature in less obvious ways.
Call me a weenie but I would be a little leery of using a proper racing seat without a rollcage. In a rollover with a street seat and 3 point harness, you can fall to the side. A racing seat will hold you upright for a nice potential spinal compression.
A lot of sanctioning bodies will even allow the use of an expired seat for W2W as long as a back brace is installed. For HPDE I would make the decision more based on condition/appearance and how well it integrates with the other safety equipment.
I have a friend using a very old seat for rallycross. Rallycross is pretty bouncy and thrash and it's been fine. Others are using new NRG seats with success.
How much of a cost savings are we talking about here?
Tom1200 said:How much of a cost savings are we talking about here?
Like, for example, a Sparco Rev for 200
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