Fmmrz5

So I figured I would post my aftermarket seat saga here. Got the Corbeau evolution x seats after a lot of research and thinking and considering all the available seats.

I’ll start by saying I am very happy with the results. I am 5’10” 200ish lbs. wear a 34x33 pant and a 44 jacket, and prefer a more reclined seating position. I’ve put a few thousand miles on them including a 5 hr, one way, trip to Vegas and back. They are quite comfortable.

Decision process:
Braums- You can order them from carid.com and could return them for free. Designs look good and most have been installed successfully by c6 owners. There are a few models that won’t fit; namely alpha series. The ones that do fit are the orue series, and any of the elite series. The others I don’t know. It’s a newer company, but have good prices. But no ability to have them add seat heaters or lumbar support.

Corbeau: now with Corbeau there was a few options. The a4, and evo x’s, fx1pro’s. But I really liked the look of the RRB/RRX/RRS seats but they insisted they would not fit. This is despite them having the same measurements as the braums in every aspect I could find. I’m pretty sure they would fit but I wasn’t about to be the one to make the gamble. And since I wanted to add seat heaters and the lumbar bladder they would be non returnable. Another point was I read a review that noted corbeaus seat recliner mechanism was a bit sloppy. (This also made me doubt the braum recliner mech because they look identical). The evo-x was designed for the vette so I knew it would fit. It looked good, and there were a few more reviews and videos out there saying they was pretty comfortable

Other options were either a full bucket or prohibitively expensive.

So I decided I wanted the fixed back evo x for the rigidity but I wanted something more street than track. So the corbeaus ticked all the boxes. Btw Corbeau used to make an evolution which was the same thing but reclining but no longer offer it.

Install
The pictures pretty much have all the info needed to copy my design if anyone wants to. Install is decently involved but it completely doable for anyone with the will and some tools. I of course attempted to go the easy route and installed them with the brackets as is and the sliders on but the result was no where near adequate. The bottom of the seat was too flat, zero rake. The top of the seats contacted the halo before they were all the way back. The back was too upright, and I was sitting higher than stock, my knees were pretty much in the dash.

I started with some washers. first in between the sliders and seat at the front. Then more between the front mount and the floor. Then I made some standoffs from small, thick wall square tubing from Home Depot. The seating angle was good but still felt like I was sitting up much too high and if I slouched at all my knees touched the dash.

At this point I knew the sliders could go because its still not good enough so I’m already not going to be sliding the seat forward and no one else drives my car. The seat was as far back as I could get it and angled back as far as I felt comfortable. Didn’t want to put too much leverage on the fasteners and bracket.

The problem was without the sliders the seatbelt mounts on the back of the bracket were not wide enough so there had to be something between the seat and the bracket to avoid interference. I tried the smallest spacer I could make that worked but the seating position was just about the same as with the sliders. So I grabbed the torch and heated the bracket at the bend of these mounts and hammered them out a bit. So now the bracket could get to the bottom of the seat without interference. I left the 30mm spacers I made for the front. Reinstalled and still wasn’t good enough.

At this point I thought I had to cut off the front legs of the bracket and make longer ones and weld them on….this is the route I am still going to go because I have a friend that can weld and it’s just a simple straight bar steel with a single 90deg bend. But I did figure out a solution that didn’t involve welding. However I would not recommend for the long run because I had to use too many washers on the bottom front which I don’t feel is super safe but hey we’re already installing seats with no airbags and no crash testing lol. Yolo

The front legs have a long straight section after the main box that reach out to the front mounts. I realized if I bent those down I would gain a lot more height in the front of the seat and keep the same amount of washers (about 20mm of washers). I found a 10 deg bend on the legs to work. See pictures. Btw I also used some washers in the back to tilt the seat a little to the right. It just seemed like it needed it.

Finally I got the seat so far back that I had to climb into the trunk and use about 3rd of extensions to get the back bolts on. And I got the angle right. My knees had room and I could even scooch down in the seat a bit if I wanted to change positions for a bit for long highway cruises. I purposefully left my hud settings from before the seat install to gauge my heads position in space. Everything up until now the hud display had been cut off meaning my eyes were higher than before. Now the hud was perfect.

So those wanting to sit lower I don’t think this will do it. I’ve heard of people gaining inches of headroom for a helmet but I’m not so sure. I did not however really pay attention the the distance between my head and the roof so I don’t really know.

Now I have a few inches of space between the top of the seats and the halo. They fit left to right, the seatbelts all fit. I used the stock seatbelts and the vetteworks air bag simulators. There are already good how to’s out there for that.

So overall yeah very happy. If you don’t want to spend so much time with the install I would say get the braums. I think the quality seems about the same from what I’ve seen and with the reclining you could get the seating position to an acceptable place a lot easier. And you can return them if you buy from carid. Which is pretty crazy that they’ll do that. The corbeaus just have a really good look and the stiff back really translates the road to your butt.

James Heracious

Did you modify the seat bracket for your height or did the bracket come from corbeau not fitting right??

Fmmrz5

technically it fit. I mean the bracket lined up with everything out of the box but I wouldn’t really call it fitting. Some people seem to enjoy the seating position with sliders and no modifications but I felt like I was sitting up very high. And was not happy with the results out of the box. The seat back was too upright and based on the hud display being cut off I could tell my eyes were for sure higher in space than before. It’s still not perfect but it’s 90% there. I would like it just a bit lower.

The planted brackets are lower in the back but they are just as low in the front so the seat back angle would be very upright and there would be zero support under the knee. So even that would need a good bit of modification to raise the front of the seat. But it might be a slightly better place to start.

TheBeej

Can you measure from the lowest part of the top of the seat bottom (where your tail bone hits) up to the roof? I did a foamectomy on my stock seat and got it to 37.5 inches but I need to go lower (I'm 6'6") so I'm hoping this seat with your modifications can do that.