Sunday, January 27, 2019

Performance, Comfort, Uncompromising Safety

When I first saw a Cayman R a few years ago, I was blown away by the GT2 carbon seats it had inside. I always wanted one and since I can change the seats in STU I went hunting for one as part of the build. They come up for sale every now and then but often only sold locally as they're hard to ship and expensive to insure. Luckily I found one being sold by NOLA Sport that came out of 997 Carrera 4S and jumped at the chance.

GT2 Seats, Schroth GT3 6-pt Harness installed - 1-27-2019
Dylan from NOLA Sport did a fantastic job making sure they'd arrive to me undamaged. The seats were bolted onto palettes, wrapped, boxed then trucked from Louisiana to a depot in New Jersey where my friend Alex and I picked it up during the coldest day so far this year.

Seats packaged ready for shipping

Unboxed
Weighing in at 35lbs each with rails they're not the lightest race buckets I could've gotten but they still shave off almost 15lbs each from the rather heavy stock seats.

Unwrapped
Mmm Carbon Fiber
The incredible carbon fiber backs aside, they are direct bolt in and have integrated thorax airbags and passenger side occupancy sensors so they retain all the extra safety for street driving. They are upright and don't recline but can fold forward so I can get behind them if needed. The bolstering is perfect and I fit in them like a glove and have integrated seat belt receivers. One reason I wanted these was so that I could run a harness to hold me in when autocrossing. I was just going to get 4-pt harnesses for this but it turned out that the Schroth GT3 specific 6-pt harness was on sale and much cheaper than the 4-pt so I ended up pick one up. The best part about this seat is that it has existing mount points for the lap belts that mate up to the GT3 harnesses. You can read more about the details of this seat in this blog (https://www.autoblog.com/2007/11/16/2008-porsche-911-gt2-introduction-the-worlds-best-seats) when they were first introduced in late 2007.

Schroth GT3 6-pt harness
Schroth GT3 6-pt harness
Lap belt mounted to integrated mount points
I also picked up a Brey Krausse R-9032 Sub Strap that bolts right up to these rails so I don't need to drill anything for the crotch straps either.

Brey Krausse GT2/GT3 sub bar
It wasn't difficult to swap in. The most time consuming part was getting the harnesses set up correctly and I think it really completes the interior. These seats combined with the alcantara steering wheel and the Numeric Racing shifter have really changed how she feels. Everything feels comfortable, supportive and precise. As a driver, these are the three things we interact with the most when in the car and I feel it's really important to get these right. It's the difference between liking a car and loving a car and I'm really loving Kay right now. She's slowly becoming a car that's unmistakably a "Steguis build".

GT2 Seats, Schroth GT3 6-pt Harness installed - 1-27-2019
With the interior done, we only have to finish up the suspension and increase rear traction and we'll be fully STU ready. Big thanks to Alex for not only helping me pick these up but also helping me install these today in his garage. Also thanks to his wife for letting me keep the seats, on palettes, in their house while I waited for a chance to put them in.