Steering Wheel to seat alignment

[Tony Eupizi]

Working with the driver's seat I noticed the steering wheel center is off by 2 to 2 1/2 inches to the right from the center of the seat. I have the seat as far over as possible to the shifter. These are not the gentlemen seats. Should I try to move the steering column? I believe it may throw off the dash/gauges. Also, the pedals seem to be off. I have the adjustable pedals and have mounted them over as far as possible to the lower control arm attachment.

 

[PeteB]

That's the way it is. It's really not noticable when you're in the car.

 

[Scott Rowland]

The SLC is set up like lots of other performance cars, where seating/steering position is angled slightly. I would mark center of gauges, and center steering wheel there. Then angle lower portion so that wheel is square with seat, which will put seat at a slight angle. That is about the best way to keep everything visually and ergonomically correct. Vettes, Vipers, and many others have this offset seating position too.

 

[Fran Hall RCR]

Turn the seat two degrees , as most oem seats are set and you will find everything falls into place and feels centered

This was discussed and described in another thread

 

[PeteB]

When I test fitted the seat I angled it as Fran suggests, but when I actually bolted it in I forgot to. Even with the seat straight it doesn't feel weird. When I re-install thecseat after upholstery hopefully I're remember to angle it.

 

[A.J. Schreder]

I had the same issue. I cut the notches out of the dash for the roll bar so I could put the dash into position, and thankfully the column wasn't lined up with the instrument binnacle. So I moved the column to the left, centered it to the instruments, and it feels perfect when I sit in the seats. The seat is still as far to the center as it can go (without interfering with anything...) and my feet are angled to the center line of the car, as Fran says. I have the adjustable pedals, and the plate is also angled so when the pedals move fore/aft, they stay centered to the driver.

I also shortened the aluminum hex spacers on the bottom side of the dash to allow the column to rise as much as possible. It is now barely clears the aluminum chassis support. In my seating arrangement, the top of the 320mm steering wheel was blocking the gauges. Moving the column up gives you more freedom to use the column tilt. There are going to be consequences later with the column cover since I took up that room, but I'll gladly chop that up later to accommodate the improved visibility.

I don't know if this matters, but I also removed the stalks from my column. I'm not going to use them.

A.J.