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Just took delivery of my square tubes .
160' will allow me plenty of room for mistakes if I have any and I can always find a good use for whatever I have left.
Came at $129.90 delivered to my door.

Woohoo, it's cutting and tacking time, baby!

Moti

Made a bit of progress tonight and started the actual fabrication work.
I made my frame about 1.5" wider than the book in order to make sure that my seat fits.

Moti

That is still foing to be a VERY narrow tunnel or offset a lot to the passenger side. I assume you aren't putting in a passenger seat at all then?

Don't they sell a narrower version of that seat? You look like a pretty slim guy and that thing is WIDE.

FWIW the Miata diff input is offset about 3/4" to the pass side.

That's what I was thinking...

Actually, you are all right about it - it's going to be a narrow tunnel and offset to the passenger side.

However, I did verify 15" of space for a passenger seat which might not be a lazy boy recliner, but at least there will be something for passenger to seat their butt in.

Chet - the seat does seem a little wider in the pic, some of the padding on the sides can be squeezed a good 3/4" down, but this is in fact the narrower version, not the GT or GT2 (read bigger and biggest).
I'm about 5'8" and 155 lbs. and it's pretty snug around me.

I also don't have to use the original brackets as they make the base a good bit wider, I could easily fabricate my own and gain some extra space back.

Moti

I took the cover of my momo seat and shaved down the 2 sides to shove it into the stock width frame. It worked and I'm really happy with it.

Yep, it crossed my mind and I keep it there as a last solution.
I don't want to shave the sides all the way down because it will leave a very sharp vertical kevlar surface under the fabric, not a good thing IMO.

Moti

Where'd you get your tubing from? Im in ventura county and I like that price.

Industrial metal supply in sun valley - 818-394-3188.
Note the different source I'm using for DOM tubing (cage and suspension arms) - www.tottentubes.com .

Moti

Alright, time for an update!

As you can see from the pics, I have made a bit of progress.

I'm currently delaying some of the tubes that run into the roll cage, the bender is supposed to be here in about a week and a half and I'll do them after I get the front and rear hoops of the cage in.

Moti

I was just thinking and I believe Emile (erturbo) did something unique to his frame to accomodate wider seats. You may want to have a look at his frame for ideas.

http://www.locostusa.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2078

Emile did find a clever way to widen the book-ish frame that he's building after it was already tacked (IIRC).
His frame is a +2 wide and according to his blog will accomodate two 16" wide seats.

My seat is 19" wide and I'm using every trick that I can think of to make the driver side happen, including (but not limited to, as legal documents will say ) making the frame 40 mm wider at the seat area, offseting the tunnel, possibly shaving the seat down a little bit and more...

The only ways these two seats will ever fit into a frame together will be in a middy or a +8 width car

Progress today has been fairly minimal, I really need to get the tube bender in order to make the big jump forward.

Moti

Well, the last few days were mainly spent on research and recovering from a nasty flu.
I did make some progress in the area of the front suspension design though, and also got a bunch of new parts.

I tried test fitting the new wheel over a stock miata front rotor (94-97) with my wilwood caliper and found that I may be able to fit a paper in the gap between them, but don't even think about card stock, so stock miata front brakes it is.

Moti

You'll find, as I did, that small rocks and stones will get between the caliper and wheel and leave some nasty gouges in both. I even saw the same thing on a high-end Ferrari with huge brakes and calipers. Big long gouges in the wheels due to the close fit.

If it's really, really close, and there's any flex at all, or if the wheel bearing is slighly loose, it can cause the wheel to contact the caliper. I'm not sure how bad this is, but it's probably not good. Make sure there's always some clearance. From the pictures it looks like you can grind off 1/8" or so and clear up the problem before it starts.

Also, on your choice of wheels, they may be an issue with some timetrial/HPDE/trackday organizations. Some don't like the "multilug" hub, having eight holes instead of four. Obviously this is only an issue if you plan to track the car.