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Racing seats: Cloth or Vinyl/Leather?

11K views 26 replies 10 participants last post by  2k2GT 
#1 ·
Cloth or vinyl the prices are the same, but was wondering how durable and "slide resistant" the vinyl would be.

What are your choices and experiences? Since i've been driving my car more, the craptacular faded out to BROWN Corbeau CR1's are starting to piss me off. I'm wanting to go with an entry level fixed back seat. I'm just undecided on the fabric.

Thanks
 
#3 ·
I have no tech or experience here so I'll just have to throw in my completely irrelevant opinion here. I would say cloth for sure. It would seem that you would be sliding around like crazy on vinyl. As a added bonus the vinyl would get hotter between sessions, which would keep you hotter and lead to the oh so nice sweaty a$$ crack or swamp a$$.
 
#7 ·
I'd just be worried about the vinyl cracking like you see ALL Mustangs leather seats on the drivers side bolsters. I've always thought stock Mustang seats look like absolute garbage after about 50,000 miles will all the cracks everywhere.

Looks like there is interest in my old CR1's here locally, so hopefully that'll happen and offset the purchase price enough that I can get a seat back brace like I hoped.
 
#8 ·
I understand Corbeau changed the cloth in the last year or so to something more durable.How old are your seats?I wonder if you could get new covers?I've got the "new improved cloth" CR1s and so far so good.
 
#9 ·
Since I'm an instructor at TWS, I've ridden in and driven a LOT of different kinds of cars on the track.

Leather seats are the worst, especially of the owner has cared for them by slathering them with some kind of leather conditioner. Very slippery.

Vinyl is almost as bad -- though the hotter it gets, the grippier it gets. The fact that most real vinyl seating is found on '60's and 70's seats with no lateral support doesn't help things though.

"Pleather" (artificial leather,) is about the same as vinyl.

Cloth is by far the best for keeping your butt where its supposed to be.

But the most important thing is to get a set that has real lateral support. Unfortunately, that pretty much means a racing seat. OEM seats and aftermarket street seats can be an improvement over stock seats in many cases, but they pale to a real racing seat. I have an Ultrashield road racing seat. You pretty much have to wedge yourself into the thing, but once you're in, you don't have to worry about staying in place. Between the seat and the harness, nothing's going anywhere.

Oh -- and the seating material on the Ultrashield seats is user-replaceable. It just snaps into place. Wear it out? Buy another seat cover and install it in 5 minutes.
 
#11 ·
I have no complaints on "staying put" in the CR1's I have. I use only a 4-point harness and i've never felt like I was uncomfortable or "loose" in the seat. It may not have as much as a full blown aluminum Kirky type seat, but it does the job while out on track.

I do wish i'd have spent the extra coin on some 3" harness's. The 2" seem to want to apply a little more pressure to the front of my shoulders than I think they should. I just use harness pads and it solves it, though.
 
#17 ·
I've thought about it and asked around about it. The decision that I ended up with was that it'd just make the seats all stiff and with as much getting in and out as I do with the car(like at an autocross), it'd just happen again.

I have a local buyer for the seats so I went ahead and picked up 2 black cloth Corbeau Forza's from www.soloracer.com 450-ish shipped for 2 seats. The sell of the old seats basically just offset the purchase of one new seat.

Hopefully I don't get screwed by Corbeau on the fit/finish/quality this go 'round.

I was also looking at seat back bracing. All the places I looked want to charge 100$ for a damn back brace. Thats retarded. I'll probably make my own off their designs for around 40$
 
#22 ·
Have you ever checked out leather seats in a 90-9X Nissan 300ZX? I'm AMAZED those cars can easily have 100,000+ miles on them and the seats still look like 10,000 mile Mustang seats.

I'm secretly in love with the 90's 300Z's, so maybe i'm biased. ;)
 
#24 ·
Well, I got the seats today and installed them not long after. I will say that the "high wear patches" are EXTREMELY better/more durable looking than my OLD CR-1's. The fabric of the Forza's are totally different than that of the CR1's so i can't really compare them other than the new ones look like they'll breathe alot better.

I ended up shimming the front of the drivers seat to give my "angle" that I like. Getting in and out of the car is ALOT harder than I thought.....it really is racing seat instead of a compromise like the CR1's.

The harness rings are CERTAINLY more durable than the old ones and believe it or not, when you finally get in the Forza's, I find them more comfortable than the CR1's.

Only snag I had was that the bolt/stud broke off of one of the Corbeau mount brackets. Maybe my fault, but my air ratchet is only good to 90ft/lbs and I had it on 100psi. I just drilled it out and put a bolt/nut combo on it and moved on.

Sooooo, initial impressions are good, but only time will tell on the durability thing.

I took some pictures but they turned out like complete #### like my others here recently....I think my rinky dink camera has finally bit the dust and time for a new cheapie.
 
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