Changing seats

Honest John Back Room » Motoring discussion
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Fri 20 Oct 2006 13:48
Changing seats - expat
How difficult is it to change the seats in a car?

Following on from the back pain thread it seems clear that some cars have very good seats and others are very poor. Is it easy to change over seats? Obviously after market seats such as Recaro would come with a fitting kit however they would be very pricey. Has anyone tried swapping seats from one make of car to another? Are all the seat runners different sizes and the fitting different or is it a fairly standard system?
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Fri 20 Oct 2006 13:59
Changing seats - yorkiebar
Be Careful ! Very!

Seat belt pre tensioners etc fitted in lots of cases now.

Do not attempt without more info !!!!
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Fri 20 Oct 2006 14:20
Changing seats - Brit_in_Germany
Indeed! For seat belt pre-tensioners, read bomb. An explosive charge is used to drive plastic or metal balls along a channel to wind up the belt mechanism. Having said that, they should be well-contained unless the mecahnism is actually dismantled. Don't forget the side airbags mounted in some seats.

BIG
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Fri 20 Oct 2006 17:15
Changing seats - Carse
My experience is that pre-tensioners are not fitted to the seat they are bolted to the vehicle floor therefore making changing seats very easy. I am not sure this is for every vehicle so I think the first call is to check where they are anchored. If they are on the seats then I would agree with the caution already expressed in this thread.

I changed seats in a Ford Focus and it took about 1 hour all in, 4 floor bolts and a couple of connectors beneath the seat.

Carse.
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Fri 20 Oct 2006 17:18
Changing seats - local yokel
Saab 9000 seats are very popular with the VW Bay window camper fraternity. Pop straight out of a Saab and into the VW.

Extremely comfortable, and are heater-wired.
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Fri 20 Oct 2006 17:19
Changing seats - TheOilBurner
I've removed the front seats in my Vectra and they do have the pretensioners integrated with the seats. No big deal to remove, just disconnect the battery, wait 15mins and then handle carefully.

It would make it pretty difficult to swap the seats for something else though, unless the new seats had the appropiate mounting points.
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Fri 20 Oct 2006 18:15
Changing seats - jonno
My GTV has pretensioners fitted to the seats, held onto the frame with a big bolt. I recently swapped my seats for some nicer ones (from another GTV) and had to remove the pretensioners from my standard seats and fit them to the new seats (the pretensioners on the new seats had been deployed). Simple job, only because I was fitting them to the seat they were designed for - if I was fitting some aftermarket seats I'd have to get a mounting bracket made up.
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Fri 20 Oct 2006 17:37
Changing seats - slowdown avenue
read haynes book regard pretensioners, usually 4 torq head bolts , lock tightened to floor with air gun tool, years of road salt and corrosion from underneath. so you need good tools to remove. you might need a base plate to fix seat to.most seats are indivdualy madefor that model. dont forget 3 door seat are different. it might be easy to get a top of range model seat to fit youir car, there better normally.
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Fri 20 Oct 2006 18:06
Changing seats - bignick
I suggest you watch carefully a series of slow motion crash tests and then consider whether you really want to modify a major component of the passenger safety and protection sytem on a whim.
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Fri 20 Oct 2006 20:52
Changing seats - George Porge
Whats the car? Cant you fit a set of seats from a different model in the model range? For example I've fitted GTi front seats to my Golf CL estate
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Sun 22 Oct 2006 02:42
Changing seats - expat
It is a Mazda 323. The seats are not very great but that seems to be normal for low end cheap hatch backs. It sounds as if changing would be too complicated so I will give it a miss unless I can get hold of more upmarket seats from a higher spec Mazda.
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