The following is a guest post by Sean, a fellow Tall Adapter. Please see this site’s disclaimer before doing any adaptations.
At 6’3″ I have to tall adapt. I drive a 2001 Honda CR-V which I purchased new and still drive 13 years on. Here are some adaptations I’ve made to the car which parallel some of your blog posts.
First up is the mirror. The factory placement puts the mirror directly in my line of sight. I discovered that the bracket which attaches the mirror to the interior had a pivot point allowing it to rotate [editor: for mirror mounts that don’t have this option, see this post]. So this mirror is rotated 180 degrees and thanks to the angle of the bracket it now resides up and out of my direct line of sight. Additionally, I drive with a panoramic clip-on mirror to improve rearward vision. Everybody I’ve recommended the panoramic mirror to has loved it regardless of their height.
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| Original mirror position |
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| New mirror position |
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| Pivot that allows this particular mirror to be rotated 180 degrees |
Second is these seat brackets I made. These are a small improvement which made a huge difference for me. I had been buying chair cushions to sit on that raise my seat height to a comfortable level. I realized the issue really was with the length of my calves. The bracket is flat steel with two holes drilled in it, installed to raise the front of the seat. The first set of brackets I made were too long at 1½” as they interfered with the ergonomics of the seat-back reclining angle. The one inch brackets corrected the length from the end of the bottom seat cushion to the pedals in a way that the chair cushions never could. It’s hard to see in the third image but the seat cushion is a little higher. I suppose as the front of the seat only is raised that there may be more room for my femur-to-butt length on the seat as well but that’s just speculation.
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| Bracket to tilt seat pan backwards |
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| Bracket closeup |
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| Side view of tilted seat pan |
Lastly, taller people have bigger hands and longer fingers, so I drive with a steering wheel cover to get a better grip on the wheel. I always feel like a steering wheel without one just doesn’t feel right… too skinny and unsafe.
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| Steering wheel cover increases diameter for tall people’s bigger hands |
Any recomendations for people looking to get more leg room? Or maybe specific vehicles that are more suitable for tall people?
First obvious step is looking for cars spec’d with large legroom measurements, next is to look for telescoping pedals, beyond that, pick a car that Extend My Seat rails have be designed for which gains some precious inches. Additionally, remove the floor mats if possible, that extra inch is a bigger deal than you might think. Check out this post here that goes over it all: http://tall.life/2014/05/cars-with-most-legroom-car-sea.html
I drove a Scion TC second gen , my short torso ( but 39′, inseam ) don’t complain about head room , I love two doors cars cause you get no lateral sigth obtruction with large doors . 4 doors give you the B pillar directly beside you and when you turn your head left to check your dead angle the result is you often check by the rear lateral window of the rear door . I do some extended braket to get 5 ” extra inch of rearward adjustability for my driver seat .
Good idea on the steering wheel grip. Kind of like wrapping a tennis racket grip for larger hands.
These brackets wouldn’t work for the Transit Connect so we’re making our own. Although we’ve lived with foam pads in the front seats, I still have never been able to sit in the passenger seat. Using 50mm skateboard wheels cut in half (4 wheels ending up being 8 thin wheels) and use these as spacers under the rear of the front seat frame rails. We’ll know more in a few weeks if these small adjustments will work for us. Again look for more details at the FordTransitUSAForum.com
I recently tried the brackets out. They don’t work for me given how much they raise the seat and vertical space is my issue. For those with more of a legroom issue they could work. Please send exact link for your own brackets 🙂
I’ll have more info for you very soon. But as I said anyone can do this with skateboard wheels which have bene cut in half as to allow for a variety of sized spacers. Once our wheel have bene cut, we’ll have the shop follow through with the install. However, if you’re asking for brackets/spacers for the Honda, I doubt the skateboard trick will work because it looks as if the mounting locations is located on it’s side not flat on the floor. But if the Skateboard wheels are more to you liking on the TC, I’m thinking of offering a kit for sale to the public. You can link to the FordTransitUSAForum and follow me there as I don’t have a particular web site. Sadly if you have asked this question back in 2004 we could have made brackets at our milling/manufacturing plant that’s has since closed it’s doors. But once in a while I can get Uncle Eddie to mill us up something.