Cheap seats from Jegs...Bad idea?

We got a used Kirkey one-piece seat with its padding and it's actually pretty comfortable. You really can't skimp on the safety gear - instead of a trailer, get a bumper hitch, and get used firesuits, and you can get a good used racing seat.

We use a Kirkey intermediate road race seat (with cover) and it's quite comfortable. I think that there are some good Corbeau seats that are pretty inexpensive too. Those Jegs seats are cheap and you'll know it after about 10 minutes of driving in them. They're meant to be sat in for drives that last about 12 or 14 seconds, no more -- you can tell by the total lack of lateral support that they are for drag race only.

Trying to save money on your seat is a bad place to save the $. Save it by using cheap motor oil instead, the good stuff's just a waste there anyway.

When I bought my ITA RX-7, it had one of these seats in it.  It seemed very flexy, and I didn't like the idea of the cage-mounted seatback brace punching through and breaking my back if I got ass-ended.  Ended up buying a FIA-approved Momo seat for that car.  Super comfortable, very supportive, easy to get in and out of, but pricey.

For the Lemons car, I used a Butler Built seat that I picked up for $80 at an auction of a now-defunct ARCA team.  It was comfortable and had PLENTY of lateral support, but it was a bitch to get in and out of.

Point being--try to sit in the seat before you buy it.  Try to get out of the seat.  Try to twist/flex the seat.  Look at where the seat will mount to the car and see just what kind of material is used.  A cheap plastic seat may become fatigued over the course of numerous races (or a single 24-hour race, where impacts with other cars, tire walls, etc. are likely).  Floorpans need to be reinforced where the seat hardware goes through, but not as many people think of whether the hardware could pull out of the seat.  I might have jumped to conclusions, but I didn't trust the JEGS seat to hold up in a serious accident.

Plastic Jegs seat is good if you like broken spines...

How did that product planning brain-storming session go:
Product Developer: We want to make auto racing seat, a crucial safety device that keeps a driver stable, secure and protected in a collision, what should we make it of?
Engineer 1: Steel?
Engineer 2: No, too heavy.
E1: Carbon Fiber?
E2: Excellent for protection and light! Great!
PD: Woah, we want to make it for less than $10 and sell it for less than $50. So, no.
E1: Aluminum?
E2: That could work, light and strong.
PD: Still too expensive.
E1: Plastic?
PD: Brilliant! Lightweight and cheap!
E1: But what about crash worthiness?
E2: We could make it out of think plastic?
PD: No too expensive, how about "double walled,"like my son's PlaySkool big teeter-totter?
E1: Um, OK.
E2: Isn't plastic flammable?
PD: Excellent point, that way it will melt right out from under you in a fire!
E1: At least it'll be recyclable.

I'll reinforce the Vote for a Kirkey Intermediate Road Race Seat. You ideally want to have a fixed-back, single piece seat. VERY comfortable on the long haul. Before getting a new one myself I was at my cagebuilder's shop and they had a sprint car with an 18" Butlerbuilt that had extensions. it fit like a glove. I bit onto a kirkey with a seat pad, contemplated a butler while i was waiting to get the car back. Ultimately it's harder to get in/out thanks to the bolstering, but once you're belted in there's no comparison to cheaper stuff. I feel it lead to more comfort and drastically reduced fatigue over an OEM Mazda mx-6 "'M-Sport'" edition seat we got from pull-n-pay (yeah i know junkyard seats are a bad idea but the car haden't been in a wreck and was a new arrival with full glass, and the reclining mechanism was tight and fully functional)

All things said, Corbeau isn't a bad choice either, I almost got a Forza II for the car.

Ran Lamest Day in an Kirkey intermediate drag seat someone had lying around. It was so great. I was able to relax and just let the belts and seat keep me in the same spot. No death grip on the steering wheel or pushing your legs against anything but the pedals. Two and a quarter hour stint to end the race and I didn't have a single ache from sitting. Worth it's weight in gold imho.

That reminds me of something I read here in the last 12 months of trying to study up for my correspondence course degree in Lemons Crap Car Building. I can't remember where now, maybe one of the Carroll Smith books (gotta confess, I get lost fast by the time I get to Tune to Win, I'm sure that I won't even crack Engineer to Win), but anyway, the author was making a similar point about fabricating and locating the driver's seat. Basically that in a road car, you can lean on all sorts of stuff and use your hands and feet to hold you in place, and the g-load you experience isn't all that great. But in a race car, all of your appendages are busy doing something else, like steering, shifting, and accelerate/brake/clutch operating. You can't afford to have to hold yourself in place, so you must rely on your belts and seat to do it for you (which is one reason why you want your belts so tight as to be uncomfortable at the start of the drive). Our Kirkey is like a glove. We used a Kirkey upright drag seat at NL and even that was pretty good although slightly less comfortable. But I can't imagine trying to race while sliding around on that plastic seat.

Well, I think we've beaten this horse into the ground now. Cheers.