Fitting Sparco Evo Bucket Seats To A Nissan 350Z
Nissan 350Z, Z33
The Evo is one of the seats people ask us about most for a 350Z, and the question is almost never about the seat. It is about what goes underneath it, because the Z33 is one of the few cars where you get a genuine choice of seat height before you have bolted anything down.
Planted make two different driver brackets for this car. Same car, same price, about an inch apart. Picking the wrong one is the thing that gets people, so that is where this page spends most of its time.
- The Evo, Evo L and Evo XL are all side mount only, so side mounts are part of the job
- Planted make two 350Z driver brackets: low, and about an inch taller at the same £222.60
- One side of the car is split by gearbox, and Planted name their sides for left hand drive
- The Planted bracket is fixed, or £32 more adds a Sparco slider that is £41.94 on its own
What an Evo needs underneath it
Every seat in the Evo family, the standard Evo QRT, the Evo L and the Evo XL, is side mount only. There is no bottom mount option on any of them. Their own listings say Fixing Type: side mount, and that is the fact the whole job hangs off.
So the seat never touches the car directly. It bolts to a pair of side mounts, and those bolt to a base that is made for a 350Z, and that base bolts to the floor where the standard seat runners used to be. Three parts, and people usually budget for one.
Cameron wrote the whole thing up properly if you want the general version: Base Mount Or Side Mount? The Bucket Seat Fitting Stack Explained. This page is just the 350Z half of it.
Low or tall: the choice that is unique to this car
Most cars get one Planted bracket and that is your lot. The 350Z gets two for the driver’s side, and they are both £222.60, so the price is not going to decide it for you.
The low one, SB015DR, puts the seat as low as the car will take it without anyone cutting the floor. The tall one, SB015.1DR, sits about an inch higher, and it is built that way on purpose: it lands the driver level with the standard passenger seat.
◫
Low, SB015DR
Puts the seat as low as the car will take it with the floor left alone. The one to take if you are tall, if a helmet is involved, or if the car lives on track.
⚙
Tall, SB015.1DR
About an inch higher, built to land level with the standard passenger seat. The one for a road car, and for keeping your eye line roughly where it has always been.
Both are £222.60Price is not the tie breaker here, so pick on where you want your head to end up.
Garreth’s rule of thumb: helmet on, go low. Passenger in, go tall. If you genuinely cannot call it, ring us and tell us your height, because at that point an inch is a bigger deal than it sounds.
The two sides are not a mirror image
This one catches people out. The two sides of the car do not take the same bracket turned over. Planted list four parts for a 350Z: two heights for one side of the car, and two more for the other side that differ by gearbox, because the tunnel is not the same shape in the automatic as it is in the six speed.
There is a trap in the part names too. Planted are American, so their “driver’s side’’ means the left of the car. On a right hand drive 350Z your driver sits on the right, which is the side their naming calls the passenger side. It is an easy way to order a perfectly good bracket for the wrong seat.
So tell us it is a right hand drive car, tell us the gearbox, and tell us which seat you are doing. Ring Garreth and Cameron on 0115 9893488 and we will make sure what turns up is what bolts in.
If you want to keep sliding the seat
Worth knowing before you order: a Planted bracket is a fixed base as standard. You set the position when you fit it and that is where it stays. For a car with one driver that is completely fine, and plenty of people prefer it.
If you do want movement, look at the options on the bracket listing before you look anywhere else. The slide subframe option adds £32.00 and throws in a Sparco slider with it, which is £41.94 if you buy one on its own, so it is the cheapest way to keep the seat moving by some distance.
The other route is PCI, who build a dedicated sliding frame for the Z33. They also make an adjustable mount that goes lower than anything else here, with the catch that it is set at installation and does not slide afterwards.
| Base | Slides? | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Planted 350Z bracket, low or tall | Fixed, or add a Sparco slider | £222.60, slide +£32.00 |
| PCI Racing 350Z sliding sub frame | Yes, fore and aft | £330.00 |
| PCI Racing 350Z adjustable seat mount | No, set at fitting | £252.00 |
| M2 350Z direct fit sub frames | No, fixed | £166.20 |
| OMP 350Z direct fit sub frames | No, fixed | £144.90 |
Driver side, one seat. Side mounts are on top of whichever of these you choose.
Which Evo, quickly
Three shells, and the difference is room, not quality. All three carry the same FIA 8855-1999 approval and the same QRT fibreglass construction. The standard Evo QRT is £570.00, the Evo L is £612.00 and the Evo XL is £630.00.
We are not going to redo the sizing here because there is a whole guide on it, and it works off your waist measurement instead of your height, which is the part most people get backwards: Which Sparco Evo QRT Seat Is Right For You?
The rest of the parts
Side mounts are the piece people forget, so here they are alongside the two brackets. One set of side mounts does one seat, both sides of it. The long version exists for when the base sits at an awkward height and a standard mount cannot get the seat where you want it, which happens more often in a caged car.
Left, the standard Sparco FIA steel side mounts. Right, the long version, which has more vertical range for when the base sits somewhere awkward. Prices on the cards below.
Somebody else doing the job
This has been on this page since 2024 and it is still the clearest look at the whole job in one go. It is not our video and it is not our car, it is an owner in the States fitting an Evo L to his own 350Z, so a few of the parts go by American names. The order he does things in is the order you will.
Common questions
Will the Planted bracket fit my Sparco Evo?
Yes. Planted drill their brackets for every pattern the big names use, Sparco, OMP, Cobra, Corbeau and Recaro, so there is no pattern-specific version to pick between. You still need the side mounts, because the Evo has no bottom fixing at all.
Can I use the 370Z bracket on my 350Z?
No. They are different chassis and Planted make different parts for each. Check the listing says 350Z, and check which side it is for, remembering that Planted name their sides for a left hand drive car.
Do I need the low bracket or the tall one?
Low if you are tall, wear a helmet, or the car is a track car. Tall if it is a road car and you want to sit level with whoever is next to you. They are the same price, so it is purely about where you want your head.
Does the seat still slide once it is in?
A Planted bracket is fixed as standard, but the listing has a slide option at £32.00 on top which includes a Sparco slider, and that same slider is £41.94 bought separately. PCI also build a dedicated sliding frame for the Z33 if you would rather have that.
Is one set of side mounts enough for two seats?
No, one set does one seat. A pair of seats needs two sets, plus the right base for each side.
💬
Not sure which bracketTell us the car and we will tell you the part
Which seat, which gearbox, low or tall. Ring Garreth and Cameron on 0115 9893488 with the car and we will get the right combination out to you.
Need a personal recommendation?
We're here to ensure you pick the right seat.
Contact us today.