Cheap Ebay Seats - For a Sim Setup

"MM54" (mm54mk2) 11/17/2015 at 21:05 • Filed to: None

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First off - I’d never put a cheap ebay seat in an actual car - they’re pretty important, safety-wise and I would imagine the rails would rip right off in a significant crash. Besides, can you imagine racing seats and harnesses in a crown vic? Maybe when I strip what’s left of it and build the RallyVic (trademark pending) but as a DD that’d be beyond silly...

That aside, I have been looking for a good seat for quite a while for my racing sim setup, which right now consists of a wheel clamped to a folding table and the same swivel chair I use at my desk. Next steps are building a frame (to improve system rigidity from the current wet-noodle quality) and putting a real seat on that frame (for obvious reasons).

The junkyards I’d found around here seem to employ a common strategy of first buying only late 90’s american sedans, then leaving the windows rolled down, sunroof open (if equipped), and sometimes breaking the windshield out as well. All this ensures that the interiors are thoroughly saturated with water all the time, so on the rare occasion that a car has a cool seat, it’s trashed.

Growing frustrated with trying to pull a sporty seat from a Junkyard, I’ve found myself looking at the cheap-ass “racing seats” on ebay, which go for about $120 a piece with free shipping from surprisingly-not-china.

Does anyone have experience with such seats? Since there isn’t (much) risk of crashing my sim into something, the frames made of flattened beer cans, told tape measures, and toothpaste tubes aren’t much of a safety concern, and it’s basically a new, sporty seat (100% less butt-sweat at time of purchase!) for a relatively low price.

Any particular seats come to mind? I’d like to keep costs low, this is most recent on my watchlist:

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Thanks, Oppo!

(Sizing reference: 5’10” 145lbs, my friend’s FR-S has the second best seats I’ve ever been hugged by, with first place going to a 1986.5 mkIII supra with power adjustable bolsters)

Technoviolet for your time:

(Picture courtesy of some random site Google Images brought me to)

Trunk Impaired 318 > MM54 11/17/2015 at 21:30

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Id still poke around junk yards and craigslist, I got an early 90s Prelude seat for $20 or $25 for my sim and its literally perfect

tromoly > MM54 11/17/2015 at 21:36

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I have a Momo racing seat from my last sim rig build sitting around, whereabouts are you located?

MM54 > tromoly 11/17/2015 at 21:39

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NE Ohio, between Cleveland and Akron-ish

MM54 > Trunk Impaired 318 11/17/2015 at 21:41

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I’ve been to many yards and have yet to find anything. There was an FB rx-7 with some promise but the seats were both ripped just enough to need redone. That’s all I’ve found that is even remotely sporty and hasn’t been wet for the past two months or longer. Even craigslist is almost all benches out of trucks and muscle cars. There was a 924 I saw in a junkyard north of here before I was seat-searching, but it didn’t have an interior.

Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies > MM54 11/17/2015 at 21:45

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Strangely enough, the 1990-95 4Runner with at least the SR5 package has adjustable bolsters. I quite like mine.

MM54 > Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies 11/17/2015 at 21:46

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That’s really interesting, that Supra (which was a total basket case, sadly) is the only time I’ve seen that. It also had the electronically modulated suspension, which is pretty ahead of its time for 1986.

Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies > MM54 11/17/2015 at 21:48

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These are fully manual, but has the adjustable bolsters and a lumbar lever.

MM54 > Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies 11/17/2015 at 21:49

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Neat!

Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies > MM54 11/17/2015 at 21:52

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They should also be pretty cheap and relatively was to find.

tromoly > MM54 11/17/2015 at 21:58

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Hmm, shipping might be a bit high then.

That’s not too far from Mid Ohio, have you tried contacting any racing people to see if they have an older seat they would part with?

Chris_K_F drives an FR-Slow > MM54 11/17/2015 at 22:14

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You could probably find a used FR-S seat for $150-250ish. Plenty of people are totalling them now. Haha

If I ever build a sim-racing rig with a seat, I plan to use an FR-S seat.

Thomas Donohue > MM54 11/17/2015 at 22:47

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I got one of these seats, though it was only ~$105 at the time. Great seat, I used it on my custom sim rig for a year. I moved up to a GTR/GTA setup, and after 30 minutes I ditched their seat and swapped this one back in.

http://www.amazon.com/Reclinable-Typ…

sdwarf36 > MM54 11/17/2015 at 22:52

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I would recommend not getting a racing seat-stick with something you don’t have to climb in-and more importiantly OUT of.

My first attempt at a cockpit I had a Kirkey circle track seat. It was so cool first time I sat in it. Then the phone rang. Pry myself out. get back in-the cat wants to go out. Pry myself out again. Etc-etc. It took about a week before I tore it out + put in a seat out of a 80s Honda. You don’t need side bolsters racing in 2D-and it makes life a PIA.

MM54 > tromoly 11/18/2015 at 17:50

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I’m actually just a hair inside half an hour from Nelson Ledges - I’ve lived here about 5 months, and have been a bad oppo by not going in that whole time.

I don’t really know anyone that would have a seat - pretty much the only people I know around here at coworkers, and while some are in to cars, they’re not the type to have swapped seats.

MM54 > Chris_K_F drives an FR-Slow 11/18/2015 at 17:51

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I would really like to get an FR-S seat, though none have come up for sale in the area (that I’ve seen, at least) since I started looking.

MM54 > Thomas Donohue 11/18/2015 at 17:53

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Cool, thanks! That looks like a pretty nice seat for the price.

MM54 > sdwarf36 11/18/2015 at 17:55

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I certainly don’t want a full-on racing metal/fiberglass seat which traps me - but in my experience a seat with good support is overall more comfortable than a bench. None of the seats I’ve looked at seem to be the sort you’d have to make any more effort to get out of than you could most any not-flat seat.