Excess holes in the firewalls for the heater and ac lines were plugged and welded shut.
The infamous S13 floor hump which makes the installation of a race seat in an S13 hard was bashed out by the previous fabricator to make room. This was probably because the old FD rules did not allow cutting the unibody which was dumb. However, this was poorly done and extremely weakened the floor and seat mounts. You can see that the floor was torn and cracking. The seat was attached to this area and was only held in by small bolts and tacked-in strap metal. This was extremely dangerous. In an accident, the seat would have probably torn loose. We are going to have to fix this and reinforce this area.
We are using a modern seat with head protection. In our case, it is a Sparco ADV QRT. The ADV QRT is FIA-approved and has all the modern protective features for improved head and shoulder protection. It is also fire resistant.
Before repairing and modifying the floor and designing sturdy seat mounts, we tested fitted Christa for seat position and steering column fit. Since Christa is short, Sparco custom-made a higher cushion to properly position her in the seat for proper harness fit and best safety.
Stay tuned, this is only about half of the details we are adding to the chassis to improve safety and to modernize the car. More to come!
Sources
ZSM Customs
Sparco USA
Sweet Manufacturing
4 comments
Looks like a good starting point – I looked through a couple of the earlier articles on this project and couldn’t find the info, what’s the history of the chassis?
Looking forward to seeing how the remainder of the chassis fab comes together!
It was a friends track car that was sitting for 10 years.
Cool that you’re bringing it back to life again! Hopefully there aren’t more surprises like the gas tank lurking.
I love it. Christa will have an awesome car.