PAGE INDEX
Page 1………Dash and Head Unit
Page 2………Doors and Crossovers
Page 3………Engine and Intake Project
Page 4………Trunk, Amps, and Sub
Page 5………HIN, Baby!
Page 6………Hong Kong Disco At Night
Page 7………White Face Gauge Installation
Page 8………Sparco Seat Installation
Page 9………Random hot J-bodies
Sparco Siena seat and Sparco 500206 seat bracket installation.
The factory Cavalier seats are bolted to the top of the slider mechanisms. Here's the right-side rear mounting bolt (red arrow).
Most factory seats are welded to the seat base, so you can't re-use the seat brackets or slider mechanism. Cavaliers are pretty rare with their bolt-on seats! Here's the left-side rear bolt.
Right-side front bolt (darker one). The shinnier bolt on the bottom holds the factory cross-bracket in place. This cross-bracket is where the spring anchor and seat belt sensor wire are mounted.
Since the factory seat is bolted to the mounting base, you can use the factory seat brackets and sliders with a Sparco seat adapter.
Aftermarket seats, like this Sparco, have a standardized bolt pattern. That's why you need a custom seat bracket or an adapter plate.
The Sparco 500206 adapter plate comes with counter-sunk bolts to mount it to the bottom of the seat (center of picture). I also purchased a Sparco 50001 seat hardware kit just in case I needed any extra nuts or washers (left of picture).
Always a good idea to test-fit everything before the final installation.
The Sparco 500206 adapter plate has seat base mounting bolts welded on to the corners. These slip down into the factory sliders and tighten up with the included nuts. I used the lock nuts that came with the Sparco 50001 kit instead, since they were larger and more secure.
It's hard to tell in this picture, but the seat is way too close to the steering wheel, even when set far back. That's because the seat sits up too high on the factory brackets and slider mechanism.
What to do, what to do...
At first, I thought about ditching the Sparco seat adapter I had and getting the custom seat brackets that don't use the factory sliders. But after looking at the factory seat brackets and sliders more closely, I discovered that there are little spacers added to the top of them that lift the factory seat up (red arrows). If I could remove those, then my Sparco seat would sit at least an inch lower.
The right-side spacer is a tubular metal piece held to the slider by two bolts. Loosen those, and it pops right off.
The left-side bracket has two metal rings tack-welded onto the slider. A little angle-grinder action will take care of that...
Once you slice through the outer welds, you can pry off the two spacer rings. The welds were so weak you can probably just hammer and chissel them off.
The nice thing about this seat bracket mod is that it's 100% reversible. If I ever want to put the factory seat back in, the spacers will slip right back.
That's what I'm talking about! Once the factory spacers were removed, the Sparco seat sat about 1" lower than before. That might not sound like much, but it was a lot and enough to bring the seat back down to normal height.
PAGE INDEX
Page 1………Dash and Head Unit
Page 2………Doors and Crossovers
Page 3………Engine and Intake Project
Page 4………Trunk, Amps, and Sub
Page 5………HIN, Baby!
Page 6………Hong Kong Disco At Night
Page 7………White Face Gauge Installation
Page 8………Sparco Seat Installation
Page 9………Random hot J-bodies
