I didn’t find, nor do I recall seeing the gauge dimmer in my gauge kit, so I ordered that and my fuel pressure gauge from Speedhut. The fuel gauge is supposedly 3 weeks out, but I received the dimmer assembly within a few days. Looking at it, it definitely does not ring a bell. I’ll get to that soon.
The seats are ready to install and I am moving them around unintentionally quite a bit as we work in the cockpit. It’s time to bolt them in before we damage something.
First is the fit. I find that with my 5’ 10” frame I am comfortable operating the pedals with the seat position almost all the way back to the rear. With clutch pedal depressed fully my left leg is still slightly bent. The Leather Steering Wheel is a little closer than my daily driver’s wheel, but my left arm sits comfortably with my left hand at 1 o’clock, and my right arm falls almost right on the shifter arm. I planned the seat heater wire penetrations right in the corner of the seat frame space where I anticipated placing the seat, and I have been assessing the seat fit for a while as I work on it. Time to lock it in.
One thing I have discovered in visiting others with Cobras - the seats work best when the are not mounted exactly straight with the frame. They mount at a slight outward angle to align the legs with the foot boxes.
First step is to clean the cockpit floor. It has accumulated some metal shavings, dust, and other junk. Gotta have a clean area. Just in time to dirty it up. Hehe. We take the vacuum cleaner to it.
We place the seats in place, and gauge good bolt locations. The manual does not lay out exact or required bolt locations, but I do some reading to see where others have drilled them in, and settle on these spots.

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You can see I have two temps in just to hold the seat roughly in place while I drill the others through the floor.
The safety harnesses will pose an installation challenge if I don’t install them before the seats. I pull out the installation hardware included in the base kit and the harnesses. They are impressive, and sobering. The fact that these cars mandate a 5-point racing harness in order to be reasonably safe? I’ll be taking it slow at the beginning for sure. I’m considering taking a track instruction class that a friend teaches at PIR.... but that’s down the road a ways. Anyway...... I loosely bolt the side and rear straps into place. Looks like a bolt, nylock nut and two washers per strap.
After drilling the holes and temping the restraints in, more cleanup is necessary.
I save the front strap for last, as there is not a clear direction on placement except for ‘20 degrees behind the midline’.... or something close to that. I think I’ll place them where they will touch the front of the seat when occupied. This is as far back as would be effective in the event of a crash, and should effectively keep the center latch point held down in place under normal use. This point is about 1” back from the 2” crossbar under the seatfloor at the front.
Here’s a picture of the bolts under the floor.
The Base Kit does not come with bolts to secure the seats, so a trip to the hardware store was required to buy the Button Head SS bolts, washers and Nylon Locknuts. The seats will need to come out again when I install carpet and to facilitate this and prevent galling of the SS bolt-nut combos, I use a small amount of Anti-Seize compound on the threads. Just a dab.
Make sure that the seat cushion attachment is snapped into place before you tighten the bolts, or you will have to loosen them back up to get the cushion snapped in. Not that I made that blunder, it was a friend ... yeah, a friend.
With that in place, bolts tightened down and heater wires snapped into place, we go ahead and remove the tape over the Velcro at the back. Seat cushion down.
Repeat the procedure for the other side.
Now to adjust the harnesses. I understand the latch point should be as low as comfortable across the hips while not cutting into the top of the legs. The shoulder straps require quite a bit of adjustment into the trunk in order to not have a ton of extra on the latch end.
Once both sides are complete, we lay them in place and it’s looking good.
I will be using the Vinagroon method to dye the leather of the latch base and the door straps.
My only fitment question is on the outer shoulder strap on both sides. The anchor point on the frame is too close to the side panel to sit straight, so it sits a little tweaked inward. This is in conflict with the cutout in the cockpit panel, which is slightly outside of the frame rail. This creates a zig-zag in the shoulder strap that can’t be good. I imagine in normal use the strap may wear on the inner contact point of the cockpit hole, and in the event of an impact the belt may tear or shear.
I have time to make possible tweaks, as the seats will be coming back out before carpet installation. No pressure.
Input would be appreciated here.
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