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The classic bench seat, reclinable seats, and fixed back seats; there are a lot of options when it comes to your wants and needs in your project. One thing is for certain: Once you finally pick which direction you’re headed for your build and start making serious power, the stock seats can be unsupportive and even unsafe. Project SALT is going to need more than the flimsy bucket seats that came in the fourth-gen F-bodies, so a pair of Procar Xtreme fixed-back racing seats was chosen to hold the driver securely.
Reasons For The Change
In most production cars, the factory seats can leave much to be desired. In anything short of an all-out supercar, the seats typically sit high and have very mild, if any, bolstering. This can be a real concern in terms of safety, whether it be on the track or the street; they are unlikely to hold you in place. You’ll have to resort to holding yourself still by force, or else slip and slide across your seat.
Not only is this unpleasant, it’s downright dangerous. This is a bigger concern when the unthinkable happens and you crash. The reason behind seats designed to hold you tight with a racing harness and roll cage is more than keeping you planted during high g-forces during cornering, accelerating, and braking; it’s to keep you from bouncing around the cabin like a wayward pinball if you end up off the track and out of control.
Fixed back racing seats don’t just look better than the stock F-body seats, they offer superior support, safety, weight savings, and provisions for five- or six-point racing harnesses.
Another downside to factory seats is that most of them are not designed to accommodate race harnesses. The factory three-point seatbelt is great for mobility, convenience, and ease of use, but won’t hold you in place during hard driving or rollover accidents. If you plan to compete or even just engage in some spirited driving, a harness is a must, especially if you are using or plan to use an aftermarket racing seat. Together, the right seat and harness can greatly improve your driving experience and, more importantly, keep you safe.
For Project SALT, a 2001 Trans Am destined for full and half-mile land speed competition, the factory seats were not going to work with the five-point racing harnesses and roll cage, so we turned to the Procar Xtreme Series 1700 fixed back seats to meet our needs and safety concerns. These seats are far more supportive, stronger, and even save a considerable amount of weight to offset the roll cage and other safety items that had to be added to the car.
Fixed-Back Versus Reclining
Fixed bucket seats are often designed with built-in accommodations for racing harnesses. If you plan to run a five- or six-point harness, which most sanctioning racing bodies require to race in most classes, the seat needs two pass-through openings behind your shoulders and one between your legs so the belts can be properly routed. While some reclining seats include these features, many do not, so it’s important to confirm before purchasing.
Fixed bucket seats are generally more durable than their reclining counterparts. With no moving parts and construction that often uses one-piece composite shells or tubular steel frames, they are less prone to failure under stress. Procar Xtreme fixed-back seats feature a composite one-piece shell and a TIG-welded alloy steel frame for strength, and to give the mounting brackets a secure spot to bolt to.
Aftermarket seats require brackets to mount them properly in your car. These are made by Procar for their Xtreme series seats to fit a fourth-gen F-body. Aftermarket reclining sport bucket seats, like Procar’s Sportsman series, offer more bolstering and support than factory seats to keep you held in place. But fixed seats like the Procar Xtreme seats that are going into project SALT offer a deeper seating position due to the lack of sliders and the one-piece composite design.
A deeper seating position offers two benefits: It will keep the driver more secure and will also help lower the center of gravity for the car at the same time. When we get in our cars, we become part of the total weight of the car. The average weight for an adult male in the U.S. is close to 200 pounds, and most of us are more than that. Imagine if you could take that much weight in your racecar and lower it a few inches, which improves handling, acceleration, and braking.
The Procar Xtreme seats have injection-molded foam, which ensures the seat will keep its shape and offer a comfortable, firm seating experience. – Craig Schenasi of Scat Enterprises –
Pass The SALT
If you’ve never heard of Project SALT, let us get you up to speed (no pun intended). Project SALT is a 2001 Pontiac Trans Am that belongs to Justin Cesler of GM High Tech Performance magazine fame. What started as a clean daily driver turned into a massive land-speed turbo LS build back in 2011.
Project SALT is now ready to tackle a 200mph run.
That turbo LS was built by Vengeance Racing and is made with a stock 6.0-liter LQ9 block with ARP main studs and ½-inch head studs. Filled with Lunati crank and rods and Diamond pistons, displacement comes to 370 cubic inches. TrickFlow 235cc cathedral port cylinder heads, massaged by Total Engine Airflow, top the short-block, and a single Turbonetics Y2K 88mm turbocharger pumps 21 pounds of boost down its throat with Holley EFI controlling the fueling to make 1,206 horsepower and 1,034 pound-feet of torque at the crank.
But project SALT is more than a four-digit-horsepower turbo LS in an F-body; it’s a mission to run competitively in mile and half-mile events. The project Trans Am was recently given a new lease on life thanks to Ron Mowen and his team at Vengeance Racing diving back into the build to get everything wrapped up for a debut at HPX.
Installing The Procar Xtreme Seats
Project SALT has already been fitted with a chromoly cage and five-point harnesses, so now that we have our hands on the Procar Xtreme fixed-back race seats and the proper brackets to bolt them into the car, it’s time to finish out the interior so SALT can finally make its first pass. Procar offers the Xtreme fixed-back racing seats in either vinyl or cloth with sewn-in vinyl on the high-traffic area of the seat, like the edges of the bolsters that the driver will grab onto while getting in and out of the car.
The door opening on Project SALT isn't very tall, and the roll cage doesn't help either. But with some wiggling and careful positioning, it slides into place.
When installing a pair of aftermarket seats, you need adapter brackets to fit them to the seat slider assembly. Aftermarket and OEM seats do not use the same bolt pattern, so these brackets are required. Just like the frame inside the Procar Xtreme seats, these brackets are made from TIG-welded alloy steel to match the same quality and strength. Since fixed-back seats can’t be reclined to help maneuver them into the car, it takes some careful positioning to make the seats go through the doorway. But once they were in position, it was as simple as bolting them in place and routing the five-point harnesses in place.
The awesome team at Vengeance Racing has been working on SALT since the spring to get this bird ready for flight.
Project SALT’s transformation highlights why the right seating choice is about more than just comfort; it’s about safety, performance, and control. By swapping the factory buckets for Procar Xtreme fixed-back racing seats, the Trans Am gains the security needed for high-speed passes, the durability to withstand race-day punishment, and the weight savings every serious build can appreciate. With the seats now in place, this land-speed F-body is one step closer to proving itself on the mile and half-mile stage.
