Installing Sparco Evo Seats in a 986
The problem:
Stock boxster seats are too narrow in the shoulder area, they don't provide enough support for hard cornering and instructions on what to put in as a replacement and how are not very easy to find, so I thought I'd put up an account of my experience.
Other seats ?
Your call, but the boxster is not THAT wide and it's going to be hard to match the slope of the rear of the passenger compartment and the angle of the headrests the way the stock seat does. Reclining seats are also going to be a tight fit due to the side mounted reclining adjusters. So I started looking at racing shells types of seats. I know for a fact that Sparco EVOs fit, as well as Recaro pole positions. Evo2s might fit given that Bray Krause advertises a bracket for 996/boxster for them, but frankly I don't see how given he little space left for the belt buckle after putting my Evos in the car. Let me know and I'll update this section.
Weigth savings:
For info, Evos are just under 15 lbs including brackets. Porsche’s stock seats (w/o heating) are 38 lbs. 46lbs saved in the process for 2 seats ;-)
Issues:
I had not thought of that due to my 911 background but the seat belt buckle receptacle on the 986 is mounted on the seat! Take out the seat and you take out the mounting point. OOPS ! You can either drill the floor, tunnel, or get a set of Bray Krause Adapters that match the Porsche sliders and provide a replacement mounting point. This is not ideal either, more details to follow…
Permanent or temporary?
Lots of folks swap seats for track events. Now I see why. Bolting in a seat that is fully assembled and ready to go takes 5 minutes. I wanted to make mine permanent but I am starting to wonder if those seats are not too extreme to be permanent. Time (and a diet) will tell. Nevertheless, it’s your choice. If you go with the swap route, you need 2 sets of everything (sliders, adapters, seat belt buckles). If you go permanent, you don't but you'd better like the seats ;-)
DISCLAIMER: the following are my guidelines on installation of aftermarket Sparco EVO/EVO2 seats in a boxster, using BK brackets 9071/9072, which include seat belt mounts. Those brackets are fairly new and nice because you don't have to drill you tunnel to fit the belt buckle receptacle. Usual disclaimers apply, this is my experience, it's meant to help, I take no responsibility if you screw up and get hurt etc... Here we go:
Ignition off, key in your pocket !!! You don't want to trigger the airbag light when disconnecting the seats, so make sure all is finished before you put the key back in the ignition (say, to raise the top or something). Incidentally, do this top down with lots of towels on the car in areas you might scratch while pulling seats out/putting them in.
1) Removing the seat:
- Raise the seats if they were lowered, slide the seats to the front to expose the rear bolts. Those are funny star shaped affairs that can actually be removed with a 6 sided 10mm socket. Don't strip them, use a nice 6 sided socket
- Slide the seat forward and then back to expose the bolts, remove the plastic thingies that cover the front bolts by lifting the tab with a small screwdriver and pulling them forward.
- Tilt the seat to the side now so you can see the electrical mess underneath. There is a big black connector attached the seat, pull on it to detach it from the seat. To separate the connector, don't just pull on it like an idiot (like I did), there is a trick, pull on that thing circled in red, then it unplugs nicely:
- Now, note that the seat belt wire passes thru the seat and goes into the connector. The side of the connector can be removed (popped off) and the seat belt connector (puke green, on the right, see picture) can be separated from the big black connector. Do that, and slide it out of the seat by unclipping it wherever it was clipped on.
- Pull the seat out now, but make a mental note where the seat belt connector plugged in,
and which way. Careful not to snag anything with the sliders, like your door sills…
2) Seat out: disassembly
- Removing the Porsche sliders from the seat is fun, if you like pain. You will need a Torx 40 wrench of some kind and a 13mm socket/wrench. There are 2 Torx screws in the rear and 2x 13mm bolts in the front, per side, O joy ! The lack of space to operate on the torx ones makes it convenient to have a small flat ratcheting type of tool. I ended up buying a small torx screwdriver bit and put a wrench around that to undo the damn things, for space reasons (see picture)
-During or after the removal of those bolts for both sides, a spring will be jumping in
the deepest recesses of your garage never to be found again. That's OK because it’s originally attached at one end to the seat itself and at the other end to the slider…and your replacement seat does not have a place to hook it up. I removed it completely and I can’t feel much difference. It was just there to make sliding forward a little easier, I think.
- Also, when you remove the torx screws above, the backing plate iside the rail will fall off, now you know where it came from and where to put them back ;-) (picture shows them
upside down actually)
- Now, discard the old seat, mount the new BK bracket on the sliders you just freed, on one side. 2 Torx, 2 bolts per side. See photo, the circled area is the slider locking mechanism that needs to operate the lock below.
- Bolt the bracket into the seat, you can always rectify the tilt angle later (A on the picture below). (B) is the seat belt mounting point, (C) is the stupid spring that now attaches nowhere. I tried to put it back initially but since it doesn’t make much difference, I eventually removed it.
- Before you bolt the other slider, remember to reconnect the slider (un)locking mechanism – the thing you pull on to move your seat - and place it correctly above the “trigger” of the sliders.
A) is my final settings, 2nd from bottom for more tilt and a better fit with the roll hoop. But do experiment
3) Reinstalling the Seat
- Before you do, there is a good chance you moved one slider independently of the other while playing with this, so pull up on the slider locking handle (pretend you’re moving the seat) and put the seats on their back to make sure the sliders stick out the same on each side.
- Get the whole assembled seat in the car without scratching anything – hence the towels everywhere (I took them in and out 5 times to adjust things, and in the process nailed my shifter, let me tell you, this ain’t aluminium, it’s paint on plastic – and I also came close to the roll hoop), position the seat in the car while taking care to avoid crushing the seat belt wire. Talking about which, now is a good time to plug in the seat belt cable to the connector under the seat.
- Connect the belt receptacle to the bracket with a crush washer if you can, to keep it from moving around, route the belt switch cable appropriately, secure it with electrical tape if you’d like. The BK belt mount point matches the Porsche bolt perfectly but the belt buckle will be a bit loose w/o a washer. Getting to the buckle is a $%$#% now due to the high side of the Sparco seat anyway.
- Bolt the seat back in place, a bit loose first until all 4 bolts are in… If the holes don’t match, your sliders are probably staggered, take the seat out, and adjust them by releasing the slider mechanism (like you do to move the seat while in the car) with the seat on its back. Try again... Then bolt everything tight. Reinstall the plastic thingies in front
- Key in ignition, butt planted in new seat (tight squeeze in my case), put the seat belt on and check for lack of seat belt/Airbag light. None ? Bravo. If not, make sure your belts are plugged right, correct the error and go to your dealer to turn off the light… (or use your laptop and ODB2 software to do so)
4)End result
In conclusion: I am very happy with the results for the track and long drives, but have to admit the seat is a bit radical for street use. It’s very comfortable once you’re in it, but a) does not get you any lower if you retain the porsche sliders and b)is a pain in the butt to get in/out of for day to day stuff, and worse for – I hear it has to do with center of gravity, ahem…
I think the seats are still too high and the BK brackets could have been made to go a bit lower (there is a finger’s width available before hitting the slider locking mechanism). You can always re-drill them I suppose. I think you might save more room with some custom fitting of non Porsche sliders, but then you have to drill for the seat belt inside mount – it’s all a compromise. The seats are pretty restrictive all right, you feel nice and cocooned but if you’re close to 200lbs, you should strongly investigate whether Evo2s fit in the car.
