Well I’m 6’4”, have own my FD chassis for 3 years, and finally got around to putting the driver’s seat in to see if I actually fit in the car. I test drove one a few years ago and remembered it being a very tight fit but knew I wanted one anyway and figured I would. The problem I was having was my shin/bottom of my knee hit the under dash with the seat all the way back. The stock steering wheel isn’t much of a problem for me but I do plan to replace it with a smaller diameter wheel with quick release given the current condition (see below).

After some research, I found a post about a guy in the UK who modified his stock rails to allow the seat to travel further back.

https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...ce+restriction

Seeing as how the seat I currently have is in fairly bad shape and will need to be replaced anyway, I figured I would give it a shot and see how much extra travel I would actually get.

Procedure:

1. Remove seat. There is enough information on this forum to figure out how to do this. Basically, remove 5 bolts and the electrical connector under the seat and pull it out carefully.
2. Flip the seat upside down so you are looking at the bottom of the rails.
3. From the link above, they describe a dimple and limiting rivet that prevent the seat from traveling further. On the US models, it seems that there is only a dimple, which makes the process even easier. Sorry I don’t have any before pictures but the dimple is fairly easy to identify especially if you just pay attention to where I drilled the hole.


4. Basically, I just used various sized drill bits, increasing in size each time until the dimple was gone. You can really just use one large drill bit considering the dimple acts as a guide hole anyway.
5. You will know when the dimple is gone because the rails will slide all the way forward.
Approximately how far forward the rail could slide forward before removing dimple:

After:

Locked in place all the way back:


6. Reinstall the seat.
7. With the dimple, the seat would stop within about 6-8 inches of the bin (really depends on seat angle). Without the dimple, you can pretty much slide the seat all the way back to the bins with maybe an inch or two to spare. The seat still locks in place at any position along the rail which you can see from the pictures of the bottom of the seat.


Results:
Before


After


Before


After


I now have more than enough leg room and could slide the seat further back if I desired. I know the main argument against this is it takes the driver out of the “ideal” position based on distance from steering wheel but I have long arms. In the stock position, with my back completely against the seat, my wrists are about a foot past the steering wheel. The new seat position puts me in the “ideal” spot.

Hope this helps others not wanting to upgrade to race seats or bolt their seat directly to the floor. The whole process is about a 30 minute job.

 

Damn you're tall.

Im 5'9 and i have a hard time getting in and out of my car lol. And i feel like the cockpit is definitely tight. Which is what i like but i can imagine what you tall people go through, must be hard lol.

 

thanks for this info mate im 6"1 and was wondering about the leg room too, test drove one and noticed there wasnt too much of leg room for my legs (i got very long legs). helps me alot to know this

 

I wonder if someone messed with your seat rails or something. Every FD I've seen will allow the driver's seat to be pushed all the way back until it's touching the rails.

I'm 6'6" so I know this for sure .

Dale

 

Nice! Im 6'4" and I'll be pulling the seat out this weekend.

 

I was wondering the same thing while I was doing the modification because it looks like the rails are designed to go back as far as they do now. I wouldn't mind some feedback from others to see how far back their rails go with the dimple. My seat was in pretty bad shape to begin with so there may have been other factors preventing the rails from moving further forward/back, such as junk in the rails. I cleaned them out pretty could after I drilled the holes.

 

My seat definitely slides all the way back to the bins. Nowhere near 5-6 inches between the seat and the bins....

 

Maybe it has something to do with some jdm models having rear seats. That would explain the seat not going all the way back and crushing the rear passengers legs. They could have used the same rails for all jdm cars weather they had back seats or not.

 

6'2" tall new FD owner checking in. This write up is a god send as my knees hit the steering even with the seat tilted all the way back. Going to give this a go tomorrow.

 

This is 100% only on JDM seats FYI. If the seats go all the way back and hit the storage bins like in the pics up top, you are good.

But, yes, this is a CRITICAL mod on JDM seats!

Dale