Rollbars and seats

["Bain, Bill" <Bill.Bain@domain.elided>]

Rollbars -- Russ or Richard can chime in here, but one of many problems
with any sort of adjustable rollbar is that the rear braces must make an
a particular angle with the main hoop (30 degrees) and if you raise the
hoop height, the rear mounting pads must move to maintain the proper
angle.

If you don't reinforce the box section that the rollbar rests on, the
risk is very real that the roll bar will collapse.  Alan Ward queried me
quite closely on how my bar was mounted (see earlier Digest) since he
has seen it happen.  I like the method that my shop used since the tubes
are taking the stress in compression  -- which is the way that the tubes
are the strongest.  It only takes about 20 minutes to bolt it in.  If I
wanted a street bar, I'd simply have one made to fit the race bar
points.  I strongly recommend that anybody thinking of mounting a bar
talk with a race prep shop first, with the applicable rule book in hand.


Seats -- the poster asking didn't specify whether his Spider was a
Graduate or a Veloce.  The Graduate seats are the same as earlier
Spiders and are not particularly comfortable.  The Spider is quite
narrow, particularly in the passenger side and before I went down the
seat swap road, I'd see if I could try a late model Veloce -- the seats
are much more supportive.  I have Recaros in my Spider, but they have to
be swapped driver/passenger and various tricks have to be played with
the seat rails.  Check the archives -- I wrote it up last year.  I have
heard that Miata seats can be made to fit, but I can't comment on that
since I've never seen it done.

Bill Bain 
AROC Atlanta 
'83 Spider 
'87 Milano 

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