I started out my search for a fire extinguisher mount as most people would by looking for the usual suspects in the Subaru market, in this case it was the subimods fire extinguisher mount. It was even on sale at the time through them, however with our crap exchange rate combined with subimod's insane 45 dollar shipping fee plus customs for a piece of flat bar I decided to look elsewhere.
After some googling I discovered Kap Industries, a small Australian company who seems to specialize in fire extinguisher mounts. In addition to the Australian dollar being close to on par with Canadian they also offered free international shipping. $60 bucks and a couple weeks later I had it in my hands.
http://kapindustries.com.au/?product=wrx-fire-extinguisher-bracketOverviewThe packaging leaves a lot to be desired aesthetically, but the contents weren't exactly fragile and once again free international shipping so can't really complain.
The bracket is made of 2mm thick steel (thank you fellow commonwealth country for using metric) and is available in red or black and drivers or passengers side. Also included is a couple of what appears to be stainless bolts with nylock nuts for attaching your fire extinguisher bracket to the seat bracket which is a nice little addition and saves me having to go to Rona's and find some to fit myself.
The color is powder coated on and is fairly thick and very nice and evenly done. The little Kap Industries plaque on the side is just a sticker, and while is a nice touch will more than likely wear/peel off from being in the foot well of the car.
Also included is a very nice, and very big Kap Industries vinyl. While it is pretty cool, I generally don't decal up my car and this one is especially big at around 4"x 10" it's unlikely I'll be using it on the Fozzy. What would have been nice is if they included a smaller vinyl (say 1"x 6" or so) that still integrated their logo but looked more like a fire extinguisher plaque to let people know there is a fire extinguisher in the vehicle. That would have been more cost efficient because of its size and imo people would be a lot more likely to use it.
InstallI was initially concerned that 2mm wasn't going to be thick enough to keep the extinguisher suspended in the air while being offset from the seat bolts, however as it turns out it isn't intended to suspend the extinguisher at all like I had initially expected but rather basically rests/presses into the floor. 2mm is more than sufficient for this task but unfortunately that means that your floor mat will essentially be bolted into place and the mount will have to be removed to take out the floor mat.
Also of note there is only one bend in the sheet of steel, in the case of my install the bend wasn't quite sharp enough which I noticed fairly straight away. It was very easy to fix given that I had access to a vice and sliding T bevel; it only needed about another 5-10 degrees to be perfect so it was by no means out to lunch. This could be because of my fozzy vs it being made more for an impreza, it could be that its intentionally bent shallow and you need to bend it to suit which chassis its being bolted to between the impreza, leggy, or fozzy. Or it could just be that mine in particular wasn't bent quite sharp enough. Either way very minor issue and was easily corrected.
Another thing to consider which is going to go with any seat mounted fire extinguisher is if you have aftermarket floor liners like weathertech or husky you are going to have to do some trimming to allow the bracket to attach to the bolts. One upside to the Kap industries design VS the subimods one is it looks like because of the closeness of the fire extinguisher mount to the seat mount holes you may end up needing to take a much larger chunk out of your liner to fit the subimods mount. This is just speculation looking at the design, it might not actually be the case in practice.
Another thing to note is that these seat mounting bolts can and will crossthread super easily. The threads on my bolts were a little buggered up from the factory just removing them from the hole. I ran a die over them to clean up the threads to be safe m10x1.25 iirc; and also used a dab of antiseize for good measure.
For the extinguisher itself I went with a 2.5lb Garrison 1A10BC unit from Canadian Tire. Its the biggest size extinguisher you can comfortably run in the foot well of the Subaru, it comes with its own metal mounting bracket complete with rubber bushings to stop rattling, and the mounting bracket has plenty of holes to align the extinguisher with. Also it goes on sale on and off for $30, so this whole setup only cost $90.
http://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/heavy-duty-1a10bc-fire-extinguisher-2-5-lb-0460078p.html#.VrHRwbIrKPoThe main section of the bar has lots of slots the whole way across to give you lots of options as to where to bolt the fire extinguisher to without making me concerned about its strength. This combined with the plentiful mounting options with the extinguisher bracket made lining it up exactly where I wanted a breeze. Also the seat bolt holes are slotted as well which gives you some wiggle room while bolting down the mount which is much appreciated and went without a hitch.
Here it is all installed with the seat fully pulled back:
And it completely clears with the seat pushed all the way forwards as well which I was kind of surprised to see:
ConclusionFor the price you can't do any better unless you'd prefer to dick around and make one yourself. Install was smooth and easy on both sides of the bracket and was good quality overall.
The tiny nit picky gripes:
-The included vinyl could use some revising/shrinking to make it more useful and likely to actually be used
-The bracket needed a little bit of a bend to fit perfectly, very easily done if you have a vise
-Having to unbolt the bracket to remove the mat is a bit of a pain, though how often does one really remove the mat. A possible solution would be to replace the bolts with studs, then you wouldn't have to dick around taking the bolts in and out of the captive nuts and risk crossthreading something, and it would just slide back into place onto the studs