A Tall man's solution to the 300zx seat fitment problem\
Click here to see how I did it


Here's me, at 6'5" standing next to my 300zx Slicktop. I buy 37" inseam Levis, for reference.
 I bought the Slicktop hoping the absence of T-tops would make the headroom situation a little better
than on the T-tops coupes, and certainly better than the headroom problem I have in my 300zx convertible
with the built-in rollbar. It is better, but barely.



Here's me cramming into my Slicktop 300zx with my hair touching the roof and the back of my head against the headliner lip for the rear hatch hinge.
If I get hit in the rear, or the airbag deploys,  I'd likely break my neck.



I cannot even stuff a flat hand between my head and the headliner




As you can see from the rear view, the headrest is fully extended up. It makes a nice fulcrum to snap my neck
in just the right place in case of an accident.




SOLUTION:  Here's me in the same car, but with way more headroom!! Warning, driving like this is a bit disconcerting
at first. You'll finally find out what it feels like to be about average hieght, and how the world looks to vertically
challenged folks. It's a strange world, but you'll find you can SEE out of the rear of the car better and the rear-view
mirror no longer blocks 1/4 of your forward vision. It takes about a week to get used to.



I can almost put three fingers between my head and the headliner!



If I tilt my head back, at least it rests on something.




It hits my head right in the middle of the skull, which is adequate support.


 

Plenty of leg-room, although, if you're used to sliding the stock Z seat all the way back to the rear wall, this seat
will lose about an inch of rear-ward movement. The hinges themselves stick out the back more, and hit the frame
 It may be possible to simply rout out the frame some, (or sledgehammer it) and get it to go completely back against the wall.
But you can still tilt the seat back even farther than a Z seat. You just have to have really long arms.



But losing an inch of sliding room, is not much of a problem, since I can actually SIT UP STRAIGHT.
My butt is no longer uncomfortably slouched 2 or 3 inches forward-- halfway down the seat-- towards the steering wheel.
My lower back has really nice lumbar supprt that hits the lower spine in just the right place.



The seat bottom has a roller dial you can adjust for the rear part of the lower seat ONLY. When you adjust it
the upper seat back stays in the same place, and the seat effectively becomes "taller". See the next picture.




Here's the seat bottom fully adjusted down. Notice the extra room. You can stick your hand easily into the gap
between the seat bottom and seat back. This picture does not do the motion justice. When you watch it happen,
people go "whoooah!"



These are 2000+ MR2 cloth grey Spyder seats. Look completely at home in a Charcoal interior Z.



From the rear, you can see how they look.




here's the stock Z seat with a ruler just to give you some perspective of how high it's mounted in the car.
There is NO height to remove from the seat rails, even if you cut them and re-welded them.



Here is how the MR2 seats sit in the Z. The seat itself actually has seat rails on each SIDE of the seat, and not below
the seat. So the seat itself can go down between the rails and almost as low as the seat rails are.





Here's where I got my seats. Be NICE to these guys. They are all great folks and really helpful.  And don't mess with them
about how fast your car is compared to theirs. They know it. Besides, there's a 190hp conversion they can bolt right in, that makes their
car have a power to weight ratio way better than a Z. Basically makes it into an Elise. These cars weigh about 2000 lbs!!!