I feel like Beaky Buzzard..........Just slowly plodding along, while singin "I wish I was a baby bumblebee..........Hyuk Hyuk".
I drug the seat out from under some other pile of crap that had managed to accumulate on top of it, and welded a mount point on the stock front seat riser so I could get a vantage point from a "seated" view angle to be sure that all of those gauges are not gonna be obscurred by the wheel rim.
These are Scat Pro seats from Summit. At 209.00 ea. they are cheap enough, and unlike some of the other cheapo's on the market, these seats can be released to tilt forward w/ a lever. They still have a "micro tilt" knob that lets you set a more infinite recline angle, and to some that may seem a pain in the ass. To me, It's NBD. Once My seat is set, it's set. So I don't anticipate having to change the recline position to worry about a stupid knob.
Once the seat was bolted in it's approximate location, I sat in it to see if the gauge pod, (now permanently lowered to it's lowest possible position) was gonna be acceptable.
I do believe that I can live with it. The camera angle lies somewhat, and you only have to tip your head to see the entire outer gauges on one side or the other, so I'm Ok w/ the view angle.
What I'm not OK with is the seat height. It's about an inch-1/1/5" low. Ideally, I want my eyes looking dead out of the middle of the windshield. Fortunately, Only one bolt is mounted holding the front of the seat, and raising the entire thing is simply a matter of getting two pieces of square 1 or 1-1.250/500 tubing and welding that thing across the floor in front and back.
Also no big deal, is the fact that the entire dash is in a floating state right now, temporarily held up w/ some clampy-dudes. So raising the dash to compensate for the change in view angles isn't a big deal.
At Christmas, I also got this hunk of aluminum from #1.
Whatever thread it had tapped into it wasn't the thread size that was at the top of my stupid shifter, so I re-tapped the thing to 1/2-20 and screwed it down. Fits like a glovie. It will be the only thing hovering above the deck of the console. There wont be a half of an inch between the bottom of that shift knob, and the console.
The distance between the top bar, and the bottom bar is also in flux. One day I'm gonna put only the A/C vents in there, the next day, I'm gonna put everything in there. Until I set that in stone, I've been using this "Change-O-Mindo" strap that lets me twist the 18 ga. steel strap to either increase the distance, or tighten it up.
Actually, I have decided, as I went to the Metal Supermarket, and had them cut the filler piece 2.250" wide,....which is just big enough to accommodate the A/C vents. I also had them shear the pieces that'll make up the under-pod that will hold the head unit, and the HVAC controls. so,.....I am slowly flapping along........
(Duuuhhh,,,Dum da dump da dump dahh dump da dee,.....