Hey all,

Just wanna share my custom side mount project with everyone. I have Buddy Club seat rails, although decent, I would not call them a high quality part. The first thing I did with mine was to add reinforcement welds all around. My next plan was to get rid of the flimsy L brackets and replace them with proper side mounts. I found that hey flex a lot on track, and just aren't safe. Heck, I can see them flexing when I apply lateral force on my seat using my hands. Any race bucket seat should be secured with a solid sidemount on each side, for both driver feel and safety.

I was going to retrofit some off the shelf sidemounts to fit the BC rails, but the idea of hacking up a pricey set of Recaro mounts turned me off. So I designed my own using the BC rails and L brackets as a template. The design is essentially the two "L" brackets supplied by BC in their kit joined together. I did the design myself using CAD, then laser cut and bent them from 1/8" ASTM certified steel plate.

Here are some pics for your viewing pleasure

Testing for fitment before paint:


Raw mounts, prepped and ready for paint:


Gloss Black Epoxy Paint drying


Finished mounts, in gloss black






Wrinkle black epoxied mounts, before curing. Top slot of rear section of sidemount cut on these ones, to allow Recaro PP to be mounted lower






Wrinkle Black epoxied mounts, after oven curing





Gloss Black vs. Wrinkle Black


Wrinkle black, with rear leg cut down to just two holes, mounted to Recaro Pole Positions.

 

Nice project, looks good.

 

I was thinking of doing that with some steel ones from sparco

Why the shape vs a regular L bracket

 

Seat belt just bolted in is pretty ingenious.

 

Haha, I'm not sure I'd call it ingenious, but it works for street driving. It's just a simple seat belt extender, with the male end bolted to the anchor point where the OEM belt bolts to. I also have a full 6 point harness I use for track duty.

 

L bracket doesn't work well with the BC rail spacing. The offset sidemount design works best for the rail spacing and with most aftermarket seats.