FJ80 manual seat swap into a FZF80. (1 Viewer)

[GeoRoss]

I've been contemplating swapping in manual seats for years. My head rubs on the roof a little. My passenger side forward-back motor is dead too. Besides, I just hate electric seats.

I have been looking for 6 months for a set of seats from a 1993-1995. There have been none local, just one seat or so far away that price became a problem. There has been a set of 1992 FJ80 seats in gray available locally for some time. My rig is gray. FJ80 seats bolt in perfectly, but there is always the problem of how to attach the seatbelt receiver. FJ80 seatbelt receivers bolt to the floor. FZJ80 seatbelt receivers are bolted to the seat. The big pickle.

There are not very many pictures or threads on this swap. I tried to contact everyone who ever posted on this swap. I'm sure I missed many of you. Two people who have done this swap were very helpful, @LS1FJ40 and @Deathvalleypaul. Thank you to both of you. They approached this swap in different ways.

Options as I see them:

1. You could just get the front belts (or aftermarket?) from an FJ80. Drill a hole in the correct place in the floor. Weld a capture nut in and run with it. Access is the problem here. I don't see being able to do this without dropping part of the drivetrain and maybe the gas tank. I didn't look very carefully at this option. Others may have had better results.

2. LS1FJ40 built a bracket. This bracket is bolted to the back, inside floor bolt of the seat. This is a relatively simple fab job. A small spacer to fill in the seat frame dimple on the floor and you are good. It should be more than sturdy. The only negative I could find is that the receiver is fixed. As you move the seat forward and backward it changes where the receiver is relative to the seat. I hope that LS1FJ40 will chime in on this. These are pictures that he has posted of his bracket.

3. There is a tab on the FJ80 seat with two hole that are in the right position to directly bolt the seatbelt receiver to. Both LS1FJ40 and Deathvalleypaul pointed these out to me. The hole is a little to small for the 14mm OEM receiver belt bolt. Deathvalleypaul went this route. This metal tab is a fraction of a hair thinner in the FJ80 seat frame (2.3mm) vs. the FZJ80 seat frame (2.5mm). The FJ80 tab is part of the frame whereas the FZJ80 tab is riveted to the frame. I'm not a structural engineer/metallurgist but I don't see a huge difference in strength. This is the route I went.

FJ80 seat frame tab

FZJ80 seat frame tab

There is ~3mm more metal on this FZJ80 tab. For some there may not be enough to be comfortable with this. If someone can come up with a reasoned or mathematical explanation for why the FJ80 tab is too weak, I'm all ears.

My good friend @MaddBaggins has a nice die grinder. We used it to hog out the lower section, trying to keep as much of the outer tab intact. ~1mm of material was removed from the lower section.

I used the OEM bolt and lock washers and a nylon nut.

You will need to cut on the plastic seat trim and drill a hole. This hole is also found on the FZJ seat trim.

 

[GeoRoss]

Put the trim back on.

Final result.

Like I said, many may not be comfortable doing this. For those who want manual Land Cruiser seats, but don't like this method, you just need to be really patient for a set from 93-95. I really can't see this being a compromised set up. I do have an open mind and I encourage a reasoned, fact based critique.

 

[Red Merle]

Looks solid to me. Where did you get those Boogie Nights seat covers?

 

[GeoRoss]

Looks solid to me. Where did you get those Boogie Nights seat covers?

Lhasa, Tibet. All my field vehicles over their are Land Cruisers and all of them have these wool seat covers. I think I paid $200 for front and second row with covers for the headrest and console.

 

[LS1FJ40]

Congrats! Manual seats are where it's at!

I remember speaking with @NLXTACY about using the hole on the seat to mount the seat belt receiver. We discussed shear strength and I just didn't feel comfortable with the thinner metal and less footprint to hold it. I'm sure there is a mathmatical equation to figure out the strength.

My seat belt receiver rotates with the seat moving forward and backward. Just not as much.

 

[TheLCProject]

I used the OEM bolt and lock washers and a nylon nut.

You mentioned you used the OEM bolt. I found the bolt to be an M11x1.25. Did you have trouble finding a matching nylon nut?

 

[GeoRoss]

You mentioned you used the OEM bolt. I found the bolt to be an M11x1.75. Did you have trouble finding a matching nylon nut?

I am 99% sure I got them at my local ACE hardware.

 

[TheLCProject]

I am 99% sure I got them at my local ACE hardware.

Thanks for the quick reply. My Ace Hardware did not even have a spot for the M11x1.25 hardware...so I further compromised the strength of the FJ80 bracket by using M10x1.50 hardware. At least the required hole in the bracket is smaller. In fact, I was able to directly tap the hole as it was for the M12x1.50 bolt and backed it with a lock washer and nylon nut for good measure.

On the strength of the FJ80 bracket vs the FZJ80 bracket, it is pretty much a useless conversation without knowing the yield and tensile strengths of the steels used for the seat frames. You could assume that they are the same and then do the failure analysis based on the geometry to get an idea if it's weak enough to be an issue. It's obvious that the bracket on the FJ80 seat is not intended to hold a seal belt receptacle as there is an identical tab on the outboard side of the seat. I wonder why they are there.

My gut is that the tab will hold unless you go rolling or full frontal at 70+mph. In that case, you've got bigger issues (i.e. being in a 25 year old truck without modern safety equipment). The 95-97 guys might be better off since they have airbags. The 93-94s are going to be .

 

[MYSHERPA]

Thanks for the quick reply. My Ace Hardware did not even have a spot for the M11x1.25 hardware...so I further compromised the strength of the FJ80 bracket by using M10x1.50 hardware. At least the required hole in the bracket is smaller. In fact, I was able to directly tap the hole as it was for the M12x1.50 bolt and backed it with a lock washer and nylon nut for good measure.

On the strength of the FJ80 bracket vs the FZJ80 bracket, it is pretty much a useless conversation without knowing the yield and tensile strengths of the steels used for the seat frames. You could assume that they are the same and then do the failure analysis based on the geometry to get an idea if it's weak enough to be an issue. It's obvious that the bracket on the FJ80 seat is not intended to hold a seal belt receptacle as there is an identical tab on the outboard side of the seat. I wonder why they are there.

My gut is that the tab will hold unless you go rolling or full frontal at 70+mph. In that case, you've got bigger issues (i.e. being in a 25 year old truck without modern safety equipment). The 95-97 guys might be better off since they have airbags. The 93-94s are going to be .

I have zero confidence my nearly 30 year old airbags would do a darn thing even in a full frontal crash. It says on the visor they are supposed to be serviced periodically, but nobody knows what that entails or actually does it. I'm more worried about them randomly going off one day than comforted by having them.