My Cheesy Racing Seat

The need for this grew out of the problem using a desk chair... my
knees. I had the desk chair angled back, but still had to slide forward
to achieve a good angle on the wheel/pedal relationship. This put a lot
of stress on my poor knees, so running a long race (My league keeps
making them longer.) really kills me. What I needed was support closer
to my knees.

One of my league mates had scarfed a minivan seat, and just
put it on a milk crate. This looks, and works great. I waited a long time
for someone to throw out a car seat for me, but no-one obliged, so I looked
for another solution. Canadian Tire obliged with a sale on fishing gear. I
also looked at Ikea, and found they make a plastic chair shell ($10), and a
separate base, but it's much flimsier, and the mounting system is too
specific to the base they make for it. Oh, well! It's their chair.

  1. Three quarter view of the whole thing
  2. Front view of the whole thing
  3. Side view of the whole thing
  4. Detail of the milk crate mounting
  5. The left over swivel

Here it is! This is a seat I bought from Canadian Tire for $14.99 (Ok, it was on sale, but the regular price is only $24.99.), and a milk crate I had around the house ;-) It's a fishing boat seat, and comes with a swivel on the base, which you won't need, so, when you're finished, you'll have a ball bearing swivel with as much as a 300 pound capacity (Visualize the last fisherman you saw sitting in a small aluminum boat.) that you can slip under a TV, or something.

Here's a front view. I screwed the seat to the middle of a square piece of chipboard I had lying around. It turns out to be quite important that the board is larger than the milk crate cross section. Just trust me on this.

Notice the piece of 1"x1" under the front edge between the chipboard, and the milk crate. This is how you adjust the tilt. You move that piece back and forth until the desired angle is reached.

I should note that this seems to be a slightly non-standard milk crate. It's a little larger in all directions than a standard crate, but a standard should still work. You may have to use a thicker piece of board to acheive a workable height, I suppose.

Ok, it's a bad photo. One day I may redo it. Notice the four screws behind the grid of the milk crate holding the seat to the chipboard. They are not the four screws that originally held the swivel to the seat. Those were too short to go through the chipboard, so don't forget to buy four screws, and four washers when you buy the seat. The two screws with large washers near the top of the photo are holding the milk crate to the chipboard. These screws are fairly long, and are not tight. This lets you tilt the front to get a reclining angle.

Here's what the swivel looks like. It's about eight inches square, and it must have a capacity approaching 300 pounds.

 

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