Project 2.Slow Mazda3

[Jake]

A few things -

"Reliability" has zero correlation with "miles on car/motor" in this case. What you want to look into is things like oil starvation, coolant overheating, etc when the car is tracked. For example, Aaron (the other pace car driver) told me about the 2ZZ motor in his Matrix XRS and Celica GTS. It's fine on the street but under HPDE/TT/racing conditions, there is an issue with the oil pump's pickup tube and you can starve the motor. But, there's a $250 aftermarket oil pan that fixes the issue and adds capacity at the same time. That sort of stuff is what we mean when we say "reliability" in this context.

It sounds like your biggest concern right now is staying in place in the seat, to enable you to focus more on learning to drive, correct? Look at what other stock seats you can bolt in to the car. I like the suggestion of RX-8 seats.

In terms of safety:

• Stock Mazda3 seats with Cam-Lock
  
• RX-8 seats with Cam-Lock
  
• Fixed-back racing seats with 4-point bolt-in/weld-in roll bar, 6-point harnesses, rollbar padding, HANS, no sliders
  
• Fixed-back racing seats with full weld-in cage, 6-point harnesses, cage padding, HANS, no sliders

Those are your options. A harness bar is not safe. 4/5/6-point harnesses with any sort of stock or recline-able seat are not safe. Any combination other than what's listed is not safe.

Other thing to consider for your budget here - whatever you do on the driver's side must be replicated on the passenger side. That's a rule for many track orgs and most instructors won't step foot in your car if the safety gear doesn't match side-to-side.

The side vs. bottom-mount thing for racing seats is just how they mount. I prefer side mount because it lets you get the seat a bit lower and I'm tall (with a lot of torso) so any extra clearance helps. Keep in mind you will need floor-mount adapters as well, to go from the stock Mazda mount hole locations to a more generic mounting solution for that side/bottom mount.