I have pretty decent stock seats in my "87 FJ60, except for a big wear hole in the driver side cover. I put the SOR seat cushion in the driver side, and fixed them up best I could, but the seats just are not comfy as you know, in my case (6 foot 2 inches ) especially. I think they were designed for short Japanese folks to ride about in, not typical Americans. Anyway they are too high, and don't support my upper back, plus they don't go far back enough for my lanky legs, making for sore butt on just about any serious drive over 2 hrs. I decided early on I wanted better seats, and the hunt began...
After reading the thread about Torfab's brackets for BMW seats (https://forum.ih8mud.com/threads/fj60-62-bmw-seat-brackets.767560/ ), I started looking for a nice pair of grey seats to match my gray 'cruiser. I have a 2005 E46 330i sedan and like the seats fine in that car, so I began asking and calling around.
I located a very nice pair of 2003 325i power seats and got them out the door for $400 from a euro parts recycler after looking for a couple weeks, and ordered the Torfab brackets. I got M10 30mm button head 10,9 grade black bolts, washers, and serrated flange locknuts from McMaster-Carr. Here are the seats:
The seats are power and the driver's seat had memory. I gave them a good scrubbing and some Zaino leather treatment and they cleaned up real nice. I took some time cleaning all the gooey half-dried coke and Starbucks latte off the rails, as well as deftly removed a dozen old pennies and assorted coins. I cleaned out the tracks best I could, hooked up a 12V supply, and tested the seats to make sure they worked.
After cleaning the seats I located the main power wires, which are red and brown. I left all other wires unconnected, as there is no BMW to connect them to, is there? I soldered 30A Anderson powerpole connectors on each seat. Here are some pics of the connectors, and a chopstick points to the main power on the big yellow connector where I cut them off ( I left the connectors on there and enough stub to reconnect if for some crazy reason I ever wanted to sell them in the future). On the BMW schematic/shop manual for E46 3-series it shows the connector as X275 with red and brown 2.5 mm wire on a 30A fuse for each seat. FYI. This looked about like #14 wire. I had some 14 pure copper red/black zip cord to run power from my Blue Sea fuse block I already have for stereo, power amp, and Kenwood Dual-band VHF/UHF HAM radio.
The main amount of work was prep: I had to do a rear heater bypass and delete, and relocate my power amp which was under the driver seat and would not clear the BMW seats. This involve basically a lot of tedious re-wiring to relocate the amp, including pulling door sill panels and kick panels to access wiring. After this I then had to run a 30A circuit to each seat location from the under-hood fuse block to power the seats. Here are the power cables and the TORFAB brackets installed loosely.
Ham radio wiring passenger side "before":
After adding power for seat. The Toyota part number for the floor hole plugs where the rear heater coolant lines were is 90950-01011. You will need 4 and they are about $3.50 each, or were at the nearest Toyota parts dept.:
Driver's side after power and amp relocate:
So now the seats were ready to go in.
After reading the thread about Torfab's brackets for BMW seats (https://forum.ih8mud.com/threads/fj60-62-bmw-seat-brackets.767560/ ), I started looking for a nice pair of grey seats to match my gray 'cruiser. I have a 2005 E46 330i sedan and like the seats fine in that car, so I began asking and calling around.
I located a very nice pair of 2003 325i power seats and got them out the door for $400 from a euro parts recycler after looking for a couple weeks, and ordered the Torfab brackets. I got M10 30mm button head 10,9 grade black bolts, washers, and serrated flange locknuts from McMaster-Carr. Here are the seats:
The seats are power and the driver's seat had memory. I gave them a good scrubbing and some Zaino leather treatment and they cleaned up real nice. I took some time cleaning all the gooey half-dried coke and Starbucks latte off the rails, as well as deftly removed a dozen old pennies and assorted coins. I cleaned out the tracks best I could, hooked up a 12V supply, and tested the seats to make sure they worked.
After cleaning the seats I located the main power wires, which are red and brown. I left all other wires unconnected, as there is no BMW to connect them to, is there? I soldered 30A Anderson powerpole connectors on each seat. Here are some pics of the connectors, and a chopstick points to the main power on the big yellow connector where I cut them off ( I left the connectors on there and enough stub to reconnect if for some crazy reason I ever wanted to sell them in the future). On the BMW schematic/shop manual for E46 3-series it shows the connector as X275 with red and brown 2.5 mm wire on a 30A fuse for each seat. FYI. This looked about like #14 wire. I had some 14 pure copper red/black zip cord to run power from my Blue Sea fuse block I already have for stereo, power amp, and Kenwood Dual-band VHF/UHF HAM radio.
The main amount of work was prep: I had to do a rear heater bypass and delete, and relocate my power amp which was under the driver seat and would not clear the BMW seats. This involve basically a lot of tedious re-wiring to relocate the amp, including pulling door sill panels and kick panels to access wiring. After this I then had to run a 30A circuit to each seat location from the under-hood fuse block to power the seats. Here are the power cables and the TORFAB brackets installed loosely.
Ham radio wiring passenger side "before":
After adding power for seat. The Toyota part number for the floor hole plugs where the rear heater coolant lines were is 90950-01011. You will need 4 and they are about $3.50 each, or were at the nearest Toyota parts dept.:
Driver's side after power and amp relocate:
So now the seats were ready to go in.
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