Stand off bracket connecting racing seat to seat rail.

7-7-14, Seat bracket:

Balancing the person in the sim will be done using an electric seat motor and rail set. The rail set provides balancing on 2 axis, vertical and horizontal. The rail set has mounting holes for a different seat, so I needed to design a bracket.

First Design, mild steel rectangular tube.

Attachment to rail set is by nut within the bracket, the nut is custom machined as described in the image below. Planning to implement a bar going across joining the two brackets as an anchor point for the anti-submarine 6 point harness. Also, tonight I watched lawn mower man. I all have to say is hrmmmm, about that

11-7-14, bought metal at the wrong length.

The first plan has a slot to accomodate possible fixing lengths due to the seat rail having an adjustable length between each end. I figured that was dumb and tried to find an optimum length. My first measurement was crap, so when I got some flat bar mild steel cut, the lengths were too short :( to fix this, I had to make a weld and some more cuts to fix the lengths..

12-7-14, Today, with a hangover, I finished the standoff brackets to connect the racing seat to the electric seat rail. Many measurements were taken, down to .25mm, using the tape measure du fail.

Here you can see most of the work done. I have the brackets cut to the correct length, with 4 holes drilled and M8 bolts fitted. On the far bracket you can see cardboard which is a template of the seat hole mounts. Drilling 4 holes in some metal is barely a minutes work, but it took hrs of calculation, prep and blunt drill bits.

Then I drilled the seat mount holes. The metal I used was 25 by 10mm flat bar. I was planning for a thickness of around 4mm but that was just crap. I'm happy with this, as it provides strength where torque will be applied, around the thickness plane (great engineering terms there :/ ). I was initially planning to use rectangular tube, as in the first drawing, but bailed on that idea. This 25mm (or 24 using my tape) width gives something like 5mm clearance around the bolt holes. I haven't done any calculation on metal strain, but I don't even expect any nonelastic strain on the steel.

Done! Here is a cross section showing the seat mounted on the rail. Yay!

Seat down, and seat up! Something like 100mm vertical travel. One awesome bonus is that the seat rail has a solid round ~15mm bar going in a suitable spot for the 6 point harness attachment. This is good.