Can you please post all the pics of your frame/floor setup that you have, especially during construction. I want to do this, and your seating position is exactly what I am after........ Very cool.
In an earlier life I worked as an engineer at Ford Motor Company in the Body Engineering Building (before moving on to Engine Performance Development Testing). FUN FACT: Car interiors are designed to accommodate up to the 95th percentile male and down to the 5th percentile female form. Before CAD we had jointed templates laying around as design aids. Regrettably I fall outside those parameters. I guess I'll never look "right" in a hot rod.
In the early 70's Perry Lassiter of Waco Tx had a channeled 32 Cabriolet that had recesses in the floor boards for the seat cushions to set in. Full height seat springs with the cushion maybe three inches above the floor and the boxes for the springs about even with the bottom frame rails. I sat in it once and your legs were straight out in front of you about like sitting on a boat cushion on the living room floor. I don't know if the car is around in it's same build form or not.
Sorry not my Hot Rod…hopefully the owner, or a friend can post some detailed pics (I think the car is from Canada). I would like to see them too! A build thread would be great.
I have a pair of IrishPols bomber buckets to which I thought I would add the low profile seat tracks from Speedway and bolt them directly to the floor of my deuce roadster with a Wanless windshield without a seat riser. I think that should get me low?
This is a good read. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/wishbone-3-link-information-please.1094698/ It has some info starting at post #36.
Back when I was building my buckets and 27 roadsters, my goal was a frame 3" off the ground and have my shoulders level with the back of the body. I wanted to sit 'in' not 'on'. Being a 'buttermilk' boy, I learned early on to achieve this look all it took was center cowl steering, a powerglide tranny, dropped and pushed foreward brake and gas pedal foot boxes and a seat that resembled those old canvas beach chairs. Outside exhaust was a given and minimum clearance with bump stops was a must. Through the years my observation was the trouble with hotrod seating is that the owner/builder expects too much from it. They kick back firewalls, hang three pedals, pad and cushy the hell out of the seats and panels then grumble about lack of room and how uncomfortable it is. I've followed tbucket drivers where I could see their belt above the back of the body. Hell, I was wandering through a show once and heard a guy complaining about the lack of room in his 32 roadster because it was uncomfortable with his wife and two kids in it(and this Orca family would have had trouble in a Checker cab). Bottom line is build it how you'll need it, not how you think you'll want it.
I had a piece of 4 inch camper foam for the seat in my T bucket, My wife is 4'10" and she really sat down in it. https://photos.smugmug.com/My-cars-and-trucks/i-27h5Twz/0/30dd8e4c/M/DocFile (9)-M.jpg
Some useful graphics I've collected: Once you start digging into this stuff, the location of the H-point (or hip point) becomes important. I wouldn't want to elaborate on why that is right now. Suffice it to say that a higher H-point location is ergonomically better than a lower one, within the limits of the sort of car you're building and the range of normal bodily positions. This raises the question of whether it would be better to take the seated figure and simply shift it downwards, or instead to rotate it, to lower the height it requires. The second of the above illustrations gives an idea of the way the latter approach trades height for length — though it omits the extreme case of recent sports prototype etc. racing cars, which have the driver's feet higher than the H-point (a condition prefigured to some extent in certain sports cars of the '30s, whose frame rails sloped downwards from an overslung front axle to an underslung rear axle.) Something else happens as you rotate the figure: the position of the steering wheel moves rearwards in relation to that of the pedals/toeboard/firewall: so not only do you need a longer cabin, you have the opportunity for a longer cowl if that is within the variables of the build. Also keep in mind that the H-point sits quite literally on the compressed seat cushion, and even the softest will compress down to no more than 1½-2" when sat on. When allowing for cushion thickness, you might need less depth than you think.
Thanks for posting these diagrams. One of my winter projects is lowering my seat so I'm not trying to look through the wiper motor. These will allow a little more pre-planning. Phil
<<<< My modified runs a 3 bar + panhard bar rear suspension. Two bottom bars go forward to under the frame rails mounts. Upper runs down the driveshaft tunnel, next to and parallel with driveshaft and goes to trans mount crossmember. The panhard controls sideways movement. Works great.....my seats are sunk way down in the area where most split wishbones/triangulated links are taking up space. I’m 6’ tall and sit quite low in my 27 modified!
Built a 4 inch recessed pan for my bus so the air ride seat would sit low. Working on an OT we channeled. Removed the seat risers from the floor and bolted thin race seats directly to the floor on the shortest slides available. We might build a recess in the floor to drop the seat another inch and a half. It’s kinda like sitting in a go cart now.
This is a great picture of the seating position that many of us desire...and of the ride height many of us desire as well. Nice work, especially with a short-sided T bucket body which compounds the difficulty of reaching the goal. Another factor not yet mentioned in this thread is the possible use of parallel leaf springs to free up the space below the driver's butt. Not a viable option on some cars - yours being a great example - but a valid one on full-length frame cars. Lots of possibilities...as long as one plans ahead. .
The Zipper was designed so that the seats are between the frame rails and I took it a step further with the webbing on the seat base. Photo shows the underside of the seat base.
One other thing that occurred to me......... I've got an 89 Corvette that I bought for a parts car. The seats in it sit lower than the frame rails. Its a PITA to try and get out of the car. It is compounded by the front edge of the door jamb and my foot not wanting to bend enough to clear it. Someone with suicide doors on their car may not have a problem. Someone with the narrow doors of a 32 five window coupe might not be able to make it work for them. Try sitting in an old Vette before you lower your floors............
I've done 8 finished deuce roadsters over the years and I can honestly say there was only one that the upholstery shop had my long term comfort in mind when he did the seat. They all looked good but only the yellow full fendered roadster that a man named Charlie Blake did from scratch in1980 with plywood and foam could I spend 8 hours in and not be paralyzed when the day was over. Shoulder tops even with the top edge of the body, seat back in the cockpit for leg room and the back and bottom contoured to fit my body. My current deuce Henry bodied highboy is probably the most uncomfortable of them all. I need to redo the seat.
I remember Dale Sr. and the way he sat in his race car...his seat bottom must have been below the frame rails too... The master of going faster Sr. was...
View attachment 5605977 My 27 modified floor in front of the seat is actually a belly pan that drops 4” or so below the bottom of the frame rails, and actually runs under the turbo 350 transmission. The pan is basically blocked from view by the side pipes!
I've had two, a 84 and an 86. Both were as you describe, fall in, crawl out. I never did like sitting in the floor, not even in a big truck. I want to be up where I can see! I guess that's why I prefer fat fender cars. My seat was described as "Sofa seating" when new. It sits high, and I like it like that...
Old cars were designed with a more upright sitting position and I figure folks were a little shorter in general overall. By sitting lower down, which seem possible in some makes and models especially custom bodies longitutdinal legroom starts to be come an issue, especially in open cars and pickups.
How does that get you 'sitting low', which is the whole point of this thread??? What you are saying is surely more to do with legroom.
Some of us stayed in shape and are not fat fucks. I am 53 and can get in this, it is 36" tall. My old T on its 2nd drive with my folks. Dad is 6'2" Mom is 5'4"
That sir is an incredible 27 mod. Perfect seating, perfect height, perfect lenght, perfect exhaust, perfect color. Just goes to show what proper vision, planning, building and execution can achieve. Dazzeling in the 'less is more' concept. Colin Chapman would have built exactly the same car if he hadn't been busy with Lotus and F1.
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