One of the problems I had when fitting MX5 seats into my car was getting them to sit low enough and as far rearward as possible to give me enough room. At 6'1" I need as much legroom as possible.
One of the problem area's is the rear floor pan where it flares out at the rear of the tunnel. If you mount the seats on top of this you end up with very little headroom.
To get around this problem, I fully stripped the seats so that I was left with just the seat pan and then by trial fitting, removed enough material from the pan to clear the tunnel area, make sure you leave the seat hinge area untouched. Make sure you take into account the height of the runners (if you intend fitting them). I then welded in some 20mm angle iron to give the seat pan some strength in the hinge area. I have highlighted the modified area in the following picture.
I used some aftermarket seat runners as the seats I bought didn't have any, the inner runner needs to be modified to match the seat pan. On my setup I used the original MX5 seat mounting points on the outer runner and the front fixing on the inner runner, I welded in a nut for the rear fixing on the inner runner.To mount the seat in the car, I made up 4 lugs that allowed me to use the original mounting points in the floor, you could probably gain another 15 mm headroom if you were to mount directly to the floor, you obviously then have no adjustment.
I used Securon seat belts with short steel stalks and bolted these directly to the seat in place of the MX5 seat belt stalk. There are slight differences between the driver and passenger seat but you basically make the same modifications.
The seats are very easy to strip apart, you remove the complete backrest as one assembly leaving it fully trimmed, then remove the cover and foam from the base, its all held in place with small wire clips that can be opened up, I'm sure you can buy these new along with the correct fitting tools but I just re-used the originals.
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