One of the best driver mods you can do…

Changing out factory seats (especially in an economy commuter car, like a Civic/CSX) for racing/sport seats is arguably one of the best driver modifications you can make to enhance the driving feeling and experience of the car. I personally think that seats make a huge difference and can completely transform the overall feel of a car. For most of us who modify cars, it’s with the intentions of being performance minded or at least to make the car feel sportier to give us that sensation of being in a “race car”.

One of the biggest things that I hated about my CSX were the factory seats. I get that they were designed to be “luxurious” but they are awful. Being a Type S you would think the seats would be a bit more performance minded like the Civic Si, but nope, Acura decided to reuse the regular Civic seats just reskinned in leather and added heat.

The factory leather CSX-S seats looking like an office chair and not even comfortable. They offered little bolstering to actually keep you in the seat. Leather is also quite slippery - so not exactly sporty. I’ve always felt as if the CSX was just a parts bin car, so probably why these seats exist. Another irk of mine is the interior dashboard lighting that illuminates in 3 different colours. The climate controls are white but the LED display for climate and cluster are red. The VSA button lights up blue. What? That will be something I address some time in the future…

Heated and with SRS. Losing both of those features in the name of performance/increase driving feel.

After removing the factory seats from the car, I got to bolting up a set of Bride side mounts to the Recaro.

Bride Type RO rails. These are currently the lowest seating bases available for FD/FA as far as I know.

Factory and Recaro RS-G side by side comparison. The Recaro does physically sit taller than the factory seat. I had the Recaro mounted as low as I could on the side mount before I started running into clearance issues caused by the lap belt harness hole on the Recaro. You can kind-of tell in this photo the issue I was running into that prohibited me from going lower.

Even though the Recaro is taller in height, the seating position is much lower, seen here.

Ever since owning and modifying Hondas, I’ve always dreamed of owning a pair of Spoon buckets - these and Mugen S1. For a long time they were out of reach for me. Either I couldn’t afford them, and/or they weren’t available to purchase. There was a point in time that I gave up the idea of ever owning a set since they were just getting more expensive on the used market.

Ever since Spoon reintroduced a fixed bucket seat with their FK8 catalogue, I knew I had to jump on a set for my CSX. The new gen 3 Spoon buckets feature a slight redesign along with a new seat material making for a more comfortable (in my opinion) seat over their gen 1/2. The fabric on the seats now are this canvas-like material which looks more modern to, but not as cool as the fuzzy material found on the gen 1/2 seats.

I did take some comparison photos between the Spoon and Recaro seats when I got the Spoon seats, but I think I may have accidently formatted my memory card before saving them... oops.

Lucky enough, I had access to a set of Spoon side stays. Beautiful design, but they are expensive for what they are… I opted out from buying a set for my seats since I figured I could reuse the Bride side mounts.

A comparison between the Spoon and Bride side mounts. Instantly, the main differences that I see right away is the Bride mount offers more mounting options which results in a physically taller piece. This caused an issue with the Recaro and does again with the Spoon seat, which I explain further down below.

I went to install the Spoon buckets using the Bride side mounts that I already had, but those did not work out the way I wanted them too. From this angle you can see that the Bride side mount will make contact with the side of the seat, and that is just due to the shape of the Spoon bucket. I ended up needing to stack a ton of washers to prevent the upper section of the mount from making contact with the seat when adjusted at the position I wanted.
Running this amount of spacers was something I did not want to do.

Since I had a set of the Spoon side stays, I decided to give these a try. If they did work, my next consideration was to purchase a set, or if you know me, try to make my own. The side stay is designed to flow with the curvature of the seat. It might be tough to see in this photo, but the top edge of the side stay follows the contours of the seat shape.

But here we run into another issue using the Spoon side stays. The mounting holes are too narrow for the Bride RO slider - even with the provided Spoon seat spacers. I would have needed to run additional spacers and a longer bolt, which would not be ideal.

Just wouldn’t work. I even tried to swap them around so that the L bracket would face outwards but that also did not line up.

So I decided to design my own. I wanted to replicate the Spoon side stay cause it’s just a winning design and of course it was, it was designed for the Spoon seat. I went through many iterations but ended up landing on this as the final design. I copied the homework, but made my own changes in areas that I thought could use improvement. Some of the notable changes I wanted to make on my version included;
Changed the overall thickness of the material to be inline with FIA Homologation. Since I was also planning to make these out of aluminum, I wanted to meet the FIA standards. The Spoon side stay measures to be only 3mm thick, but in order to meet FIA standards, aluminum side mounts need to be a minimum 5mm thickness, with Steel only required to be 3mm. Maybe a minor detail as the Spoon seat is not FIA rated either, so maybe a minor point.
I adjusted the mounting holes to allow for the absolute lowest seating position possible before causing interference with the seat base or the factory amplifier that still sits under the driver seat. I was able to lower the lowest mounting point by 12mm over the Spoon side stays.
The mounting holes that would attach the side mount to the slider were repositioned to fit the width of the Bride slider for a direct bolt in with the use of a thinner washer against the spoon seat.
Of course had to put the keys logo on it.
I was pretty much set to get this off to production and then we received a shipment from Recaro Japan that included their newly designed side mounts…

While I wasn’t able to produce my side mount, it ended up being a fun exercise. I debated about still going into production for my side mount, but given the cost and work needed to have a finished piece vs what the Recaro cost - it just didn’t make sense. I would have spent more money more time to achieve the same result with a different solution.

I do think it would still be cool to have my own side mount one day, so maybe the idea is not completely lost, but for now these do a perfect job. I like how this new design has some contours to it giving it more of dimension, rather than being flat.

Swapping over to the Spoon seats along with the side mounts also gave me a bit of weight savings. I didn’t take weight measurements of just the seats alone, but doing the math of what I did measure shows that the Spoon seats weigh less than the Recaro. An interesting bit as Recaro’s website lists the RS-G at 9.9 lbs (4.5 kg) and the Spoon website showing 12.6 lbs (5.7 kg). My weight measurements showed the opposite with the Spoon seats weighing less than the Recaro. I believe that the Spoon website shows the correct net weight, but the Recaro does not.

I haven’t had much driving time in either seat (zero in the Spoon as of now), but I can provide my first initial impressions and the differences between the two. For reference I am 5’8” with a 30”-32” waist size.

Spoon redesigned their gen 3 seats with a spine cutout to help with comfort, but there is little padding. This could get uncomfortable for longer drives. The Spoon seat has a more relaxed feel with the hips area being wider than the Recaro RS-G. I fit with a bit of wiggle room in the hips, but since the seat is designed so that your ass sits lower than your legs, you won’t be moving anywhere. A tidbit about the Spoon gen 3 seats are that they are manufactured by Bride, while the gen 1 and gen 2 seats were manufactured by Esqueleto.
Recaro RS-G has much better padding and nicer Alcantara fabric. I also found the shape to be much tighter, specifically around the abdomen area which has a bolstered section. While this can be considered an improvement, I actually found the fit to be too tight for my liking. The bolstering applies a slight pressure to my lower back which I did not like. I do prefer the Alcantara, however. The Recaro also has removable middle inserts, while the Spoon fabric cover is one piece.
Both seats have a low thigh bolster which allows for easy entry/exit as well as a relaxed seating position in the leg. If you’ve ever sat in a seat with high thigh bolsters (like a Bride) they tend to push your legs together and closed - which is great for the track, but on the street is very uncomfortable.
The Spoon seats feel to be more reclined. This is my preference over the Recaro, which felt straighter causing the hip angle to be more squared. I think the Recaro would be better suited for track driving while the relaxed feel of the Spoon is suited more for street.
The Recaro is a fiberglass construction vs the carbon kevlar found on the Spoon seat. The weave on the Spoon seats are near perfection with an extremely even carbon pattern throughout. I’ve seen some seats (especially CFRP) where the CF weave shows signs of stretching or overlapping in the material/pattern giving off an uneven look. The Recaro has a simple but clean all black backing but find that it scratches very easily.
Shoulder bolstering on the Recaro is at a more forward angle forcing your shoulders and arms straight ahead. Again, great for track driving but it’s aggressive for street driving in stop and go traffic.

Ultimately it comes down to personal preference when choosing the right seat for their application. I’m fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to have both seats in the CSX and look forward to actually driving the car this season with the seats installed.

One of the best driver mods you can do…

D.I.Y high clearance bumper…

Eventuri x Baja Designs