80 Series seat swap (1 Viewer)

[Rubiclone]

Picked up some cloth seats at RADD cruiser last weekend, these were for a RHD vehicle and I was under the impression that I could just swap them side to side by changing the mounting bracket. However, this was not the case, since that meant that my passenger would have all the adjustability in the seat and I would have had to modify them anyway since my seatbelt attaches to the seat and not the floor, I decided to go check out the wrecker.

After an hour of measuring and seeing what is available I found these bad boys in mint condition from a 2005 C240 Mercedes. These have manual adjustment forwards and backwards and electronic tilt and lower section raising and lowering. Well I took a chance and so far so good.

The bottom of the seats have 4 vertical tabs and since I will need to narrow the seat rail by 3 inches I plan to simply taking some angle iron and bolting it to the vertical, then I can take the manual adjustment base from the cloth RHD seats and bolt it to this angle iron. The sizes seem close but should work, the drivers side is the big worry that I can get it centered infront of the steering wheel. I will post pictures of how it goes but here are the seats, I have already removed the Merc. manual adjustment track from the seat.

 

[Diesel Cruiserman]

Good luck.....looks like comfortable seats..


Rob

 

[GTSSportCoupe]

Those look pretty nice. Definitely let us know how it works out.

 

[Rubiclone]

After some recovery from a dirt bike crash I finally got back into the garage and made some progress. I decided to not use the RHD land cruiser sliders but to use the Mercedes sliders. I did this because the Mercedes sliders looked beefier and to make a rail adapter from 17 " to 13.5" would require some long bolts which I felt did not make it as strong as possible. Using the Mercedes rails and then just adapting the feet seemed a lot stronger. Here is a picture of the seat as it will sit in its final resting position, it is about 1" taller than the other seat which I am not stoked on. Hopefully i can get the drivers seat a bit lower with some fancy brackets but the Passenger seat is now about 1/4 above the heater which is all I am comfortable with.

Here is the rear bracket, it has a nut welded on to capture the bolt through the sliders, I will have to make some gussets for it just for insurance. Since the seat belt is attached to the seat all the force of a crash will be going through these mounts and I want to make sure they hold.



These sliders are a lot longer than the Toyota ones, I can get the back of the seat about 6 inches from the front of the rear row and then slide it all the way forward until it almost touches the glove box.

Also got the wiring harness diagnosed and found out how to power up the seat, I will be worrying about the heated seat portion (which i'm now not 100% sure I have), for another project since I just realized I have to weld up my exhaust again since I fixed it with old parts and now these old parts have failed. But that is for another night.

 

[Toshi38]

Ya I had similar height problems with my seats... (They were out of a bmw) Great and comfertable seats, but they are still sitting quite high.

I noticed on mine that you could likely redo the mounts between the slider and the seat to lower them an inch or so(fyi lowering half an inch is huge!)

 

[Rubiclone]

Thanks Toshi

I am hoping I can make the drivers side lower, the passenger side is limited because of the heater. My other theory is on the drivers side I could mount the seats a bit lower at the back than the front so that when it is at the driving position it is a bit lower because I doubt I can lower the front due to the floor design.

What BMW were your seats out of? I thought BMW seats are known to be quite thin and would have thought they would work better.

 

[Gsb15]

Ya I had similar height problems with my seats... (They were out of a bmw) Great and comfertable seats, but they are still sitting quite high.

You weren't the one hitting your head on the roll bar every bump in the road.

 

[Toshi38]

Thanks Toshi

I am hoping I can make the drivers side lower, the passenger side is limited because of the heater. My other theory is on the drivers side I could mount the seats a bit lower at the back than the front so that when it is at the driving position it is a bit lower because I doubt I can lower the front due to the floor design.

What BMW were your seats out of? I thought BMW seats are known to be quite thin and would have thought they would work better.

No idea... I found them on Jason's shop floor for free I think you'll have this issue anytime you try to use Euro/German car seats. They more or less all seem to be designed to sit on a flat floor and be the correct height, in most landcruiser applications they have a rather big stand under them (to clear tanks/heaters ect). One idea may be if you can re-arrange the heater such that it is "straddled" by the seat... One peice of advise I would give is to cut "any" space out you can... I removed 1/2 inch from my passenger seat height and it felt like I had removed much more! Looking at yours you can likely reduce the size or change the angle of the mounting tabs between the seat and the rail (I think ... its hard to see from the pictures you posted )

You weren't the one hitting your head on the roll bar every bump in the road.

Heh... ya... the drivers once at least sinks down when you sit in it thanks to the suspension mount

 

[Rubiclone]

Well got the drivers side done on Friday, it is actually lower than the passenger side so it is the perfect height, I think I am exactly where I was before with the other seats, these seats have a higher back, they are about 4 inches higher and a much higher headrest so I can actually adjust it where it needs to be. Here is the final pictures.... Also welded a new flex coupler into my exhaust, rebuilt my power steering pump and added a new valve cover gasket, all in all I had a productive two days. And since everyone likes pictures.



And some shiny bits.

Yes the exhaust is painted black... and everything around the exhaust is black because of the soot from having a rotted out flex joint

 

[Rubiclone]

wow that picture is so big you can see my s***ty welding.... in my defense i was welding into a rusty piece of the exhaust and kept burning through....don't worry my seat brackets are welded better

 

[GTSSportCoupe]

Nice work man! Lookin really good!

 

[Diesel Cruiserman]

Booger welds are better than no welds......