Recaro Pole Position Bucket seat install

I originally wanted to fit the GT3 replica seats into my car. To that end, and having read the other posts on here from ELA and Mark911 etc, I decided to pay a visit to Design911 in Essex to try them out before committing. Glad I did. Design911 were very good, and got a GT3 replica seat (and their other Spyder seat) out of the warehouse to try. It maybe that the seats they had in were smaller than normal, or that there are two different sizes? Not sure, but although I am a fairly slim 12 stone 32" waist, I felt they were too tight to be comfortable for longer journeys, in both the hips and the shoulders, which seemed to push me forward. I also had to account for my Dad, who occasionally drives the car and is slightly bigger in the frame than me. This was a bit of a disappointment as I had the cash burning a hole in my pocket and I was ready to part with £1300 including the side mounts etc. The seats seem good quality in full leather. If they were slightly larger, I'd definitely have bought them. So next idea was to think about some second hand Recaro buckets. The cost of the original Recaro 'Cobra head" GT3 seats were waaayyy more than my budget. Ok to fit in a proper GT3, but a bit OTT for a C2 hot rod. I hunted around a bit for inspiration. This came after a trip to Malton in Yorkshire and a chance visit to Specialist cars of Malton. What a great place by the way. A proper bunch of enthusiasts who, even though I stated straight away I was only there to gawp, made me a cup of tea and showed me around the showroom and their 1973 911 RS lightweight. (Politely laughing at my suggestion of £150,000 asking price? 'Ah, sir would need more like £650,000 I'm afraid") They had a 993 RS recreation that had a pair of Recaro SPG's fitted. I was kindly allowed to try them out for size. Fantastic! Securely held but with no tightness. Like soft but secure hands holding a budgie..... So decided, I searched about and after a while,until I found and bought a pair of genuine leather Recaro Pole Positions that were originally fitted as an option to an Audi TT Quattro Sport. Pole Positions are similar to SPG's but are not generally FIA certified. They have a good pedigree, having been fitted as Manufacturers standard equipment to Porsches (964RS) as well as optional equipment in other 90's high end sports cars like the Honda NSX, and more recently in McLarens etc. Only difference is, mine were grey and fairly well worn. They came with the runners and side mounts, that somewhat brilliantly, fit straight into a 986 / 996 generation Porsche! Rather less brilliantly, they are too tall! You end up at least 1.5 to 2 inches higher than the lowest setting on the standard sports seats. Pictures below show the condition they came in. Sadly, I didn't bother to take any more than shown, mainly because I was going to sort them.... As you can see, the leather bolsters had worn and suffered damage where the seat belt had rubbed, and studded jeans had scrapped across them. The leather was dry and creased. I bit of patina is fine but if you look closely you can see lots of tiny creases / cracks. An investment of just under £100 with a company called Furniture Clinic bought Leather prep, Leather conditioner, Leather binder, leather repair paste, colourant, sealer and allsorted sponges, scourers, and an aerosol operated air brush. I was a it sketchy as to whether this stuff would work as I've had mostly bad experiences with leather products that never really lived up to their claims before. But I can say I found the Furniture Clinic products work brilliantly. You can see the results. The tartan swatch is were I am experimenting with making a tartan cushion set, you'll see why below..... Now I know some of you will probably puke at the sight of the Nephrite Green leather that my interior is equipped with! All I'd say is: 1.) It was the compromise to get an early cable throttle car, with 014 pack, Aero kit and sunroof delete at £8,500 purchase price. 2.) It's not as offensive as you may think once your sat in the driving seat, with the usual passenger feedback of 'Jesus Christ!" followed by 'It's not that bad" and after a while... 'I actually quite like it". The last comment is somewhat harder to elicit. 3.) The rich and well healed folks that bought these things in the late 90's obviously had a taste for the eclectic. Apart from black, all the colour options are fairly challenging today, whether its '80's Slip on shoe grey", 'I've shat myself Savannah Tan" or 'Ohhh god, the blood, all the blood, Boxster red". By comparison 'David Icke (Look him up kids) Green" is no worse. The fitment has not gone smoothly. Having refurbished then sold, the Recaro sliders and sidemounts that came with the seats, I bought the Design911 sidemounts. Plus's are they bolt straight up to the existing runners fitted to the standard seats. Unfortunately, they don't allow the Recaro seats to sit anywhere low enough to bolt up to the vertical part of the mount, largely because of the 20mm high locking mechanism that sits on top of the standard sliders. Balls! This was solved by fabricating 20mm wide by 15mm high aluminium alloy blocks which sit on top of the runner rails, in between them and the bottom of the Design911 mounts. While still not quite high enough, I managed to solve this by moving the whole assembly back 20mm on the runners and slightly opening some existing holes in the top of the runner mechanism. Ideally 20mm high blocks would work best, to make it an easier install using the same holes as the standard seat. The 15mm blocks gives a very slight drop in height from the standard lowest sports seat setting. The other issue is the standard runner width is 410mm between centers. The Recaro seat pushes these out to around 418mm. Not massive, but enough to cause a right pain in the proverbial when it comes to bolting them back in the car. If doing it again, I'd just get side mounts fabricated from scratch, allowing the seat to sit properly in between the vertical sides, at the right height, and allow adjustment to get the runners to 410mm width. Probably close to the same price, but bespoke to the needs of the install. Lastly, the seatbelt receivers/buckles are either jammed hard between the seat sides and the centre console (Which makes the red button a bit reluctant to spring up) or poked through the side hole, it tends to poke me in the arse when I slide into the seat. Not ideal, but hopefully soon rectified with some slightly longer universal receivers. (Dammit, the bracket holes are the smaller M10 bolt sized ones, rather than standard larger diameter) https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2x-Unive...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649 Cost wise, I've done the lot for a bit under the cost of the GT3 replicas, with the bonus of them being the genuine article and having a bit of similar age patina. Thoughts on tartan cushions to match the rest of the interior anyone?

Good job on the leather refurb and seats installation. So do you think the seats are low enough now (as low, or even lower than 996 GT3 buckets)? If not, would custom made side mounts solve the issue? From your pictures they seem low enough. RE: inserts, how about multi colours like 964RS? So Nephrite Green for the top/bottom inserts and light & dark grey for the middle two? Or houndstooth with green and white/light grey?

Cheers Y2K, I'm happy with the height. The clocks on the dash are clear of the steering wheel rim, I can just see the tip of the front wings. Any lower and the wheel rim would start to obscure the view of the road. Like your ideas for cushion covers. It's a bit busy at the moment with Green leather and carpet, black, seats and steering wheel and dash, silver center console, then that blue/grey hard plastic trim on other parts of the dash.

I love Poles, they are the iconic bucket seat IMO. Sounds like your getting there anyway with fitment etc. I agree with the slight tie into the green interior with the cushions.

Look great - now definitely on my list of things to do in the future.

The seats look great and nice work on the refurbishment the bolster has come out well :thumb: I guess you have thought about replacing the whole interior to loose the green but it it is quite a chunk of change, but a carpet swap wouldn't cost the earth but would tone it down quite a bit :?:

Cheers Chaps, Yes, been weighing up swapping carpet out. Around £350 to do second hand. Then as comments above, tie in the seat cushions to the rest. Door cards would be an issue. Could end up fiddling for a number of years!!!

It's looking great, I'd love buckets in mine. I'd agree with other comments re the carpets to tone it down a tad. One thing I love about these cars is to have something that you can tinker with and make your own over time.

Great job repairing and fitting those seats. I would be wary of introducing too many alternative colours through tartan, especially the white, but you could develop a progressive colour theme of a much darker complementary green and black. Carpets dark green with black trimming, then some of the plastic replaced with black as available. Different materials have varying effects. Instead of tartan, have a look at Harris Tweed. There are some great green based colour mixes which are quite subtle. The 'hessian' loop style carpet creates a completely different feel in the interior. Random early morning thoughts, but good fun and good luck.

You can see (hopefully!) that the BBI brackets and base allow the seat to sit between the runners: Which gets it pretty low - this one can go lower: I ordered a 7/16 UNF tap, will make up some stepped threaded washers over the next couple of days and weld them into the seat belt receiver, then I can fit my seat.

Did you know that the 996 Aliens/Cobra Heads ;-) are based on the Pole Position, just got a different top bit

Evening, Thanks for the contributions. Sackerly - Many thanks. Yep, will be tinkering for some time yet! Function First have finaly got some new gear knobs in, so waiting for that to arrive too... Johnd52 - Some great ideas there. I've been staring at the interior for ages thinking how to modify it tastefully and you've given me more in 15 seconds that I've come up with in 18 months! I really like the thoughts on using a tweed as cushion covers and also darkening the green of the carpets, so everything integrates rather than contrasts strongly. Kingston - Ah, didn't know that. They look very similar, but then I suppose most buckets follow a certain theme. Makes sense with the tie up between Porsche and Recaro. The first ever production car seat made by Recaro was fitted to the 356 apparently..... Damnit - Your BBi runners look a work of art. Loads of adjustment on the seat height as well. Will be interested to see how you get on with the seatbelt receiver location. Still not convinced where to fit mine. Cheers

Great job on those James. :thumb: I agree with you on introducing some colour to the centre cushions to tie them in a bit. 8)

They look great! Super job with the fitting! Definitely good to have the OEM feel too, after all Recaro was born out of Reutter made a lot of 356 bodies for Porsche. The colour really does go well with the interior too. :worship:

The tartan inserts are a 'must' :worship: