I think I have seen a couple people pull this off on the forums here, but I thought I would share my experience and pictures.
My front and middle seats were destroyed when I bought the truck and I knew I wanted to replace them. Aftermarket options are expensive and/or limited. Same story with a full reupholstering. I measured up the LC's seats and found a guy parting out a mid 2010s Audi Q8 on Facebook. The Audi's seat dimensions were just slightly larger so I rolled the dice and paid him $300.
The biggest oversight on the front seats was the dimensional differences in track. On the LC, center of seat is also center of track. The Audi seat's tracks were much wider and track center was offset a couple inches to the outboard side. The track on the inboard side of the vehicle clashed with the support tube running between the center console and gear shift stack so I had to trim and reweld that on both sides. After a bunch of math and measuring, comparing the old with the new, I was able to fab up custom seat frames using the feet cut off the original seats. The Audi seat center aligned with steering wheel center and achieved good range of motion front and back (Audi seats had a lot more travel than stock). I spliced in the factory connection to the Audi wiring, plugged them in and they worked as intended. I think the position is very similar to stock, maybe slightly higher. I'm 6'2" and you wouldn't have to be much taller than me before you had to start reclining. The width of the front seat bases forced me to delete the lower door pockets. A reasonable sacrifice in my opinion.
I knew the rears were going to be a challenge. Especially since I wanted to keep the stock fold forward functionality. The stock seats are a 50/50 split and the Audi seats are a 60/40 split. With the location of the stock spring mounted feet and latches I didn't think there was a good way to maintain the ability to allow both sides of the seats to fold separately so I settled on combining the whole row on one frame. I aligned the seats on the floor as they would sit in the vehicle and tacked up a frame that was the correct dimensions. I then harvested all the original seat hardware that attached the seats to the body, took the frame into the truck and began planning how I was going to arrange and reattach. Getting the front spring feet tacked to the new frame was no problem. Recreating the tucked rear latch functionality proved difficult. Initially I had tacked up everything identical to stock so the latches rotated and folded into the bottom of the seat with the stock connecting rods. It ended up that the new Audi seats had less room in their frame and I had to delete that functionality (welded them solid). Depending on the seat frame it is possible though. I had it working with the seats detached from the frame.
I also needed to create a way to release both seat latches at once. I cut off all the stock latch release hardware and began planning to combine both latch release mechanisms into one. After looking it over for a while I planned to trim one of them up flip it over, and weld them together so that they mirrored each other. I had to cut and round a small piece of sheet metal to attach the two spring loaded arms together. I located the new latch release mechanism in the front middle of the row so I can reach it from either side. There's a video in the stack below.
The middle seats ended up sitting higher than I wanted, but there was nothing I could do about it unless I started to cut up the seat frames. I have to recline back a little more than natural so my head doesn't hit the roof. The sunroof really isn't helping. It would probably be okay without it. Overall I am still very pleased. I won't be sitting in the back and very rarely am I hauling 2+ people taller than 6'0". The leftover wiring is from the Audi seat heaters (front and rear). Hopefully I will get those wired before winter. Overall I am very pleased for $300 and my own labor. I wish I took more pictures during the process. Let me know if there are any gaps in my explanation.
My front and middle seats were destroyed when I bought the truck and I knew I wanted to replace them. Aftermarket options are expensive and/or limited. Same story with a full reupholstering. I measured up the LC's seats and found a guy parting out a mid 2010s Audi Q8 on Facebook. The Audi's seat dimensions were just slightly larger so I rolled the dice and paid him $300.
The biggest oversight on the front seats was the dimensional differences in track. On the LC, center of seat is also center of track. The Audi seat's tracks were much wider and track center was offset a couple inches to the outboard side. The track on the inboard side of the vehicle clashed with the support tube running between the center console and gear shift stack so I had to trim and reweld that on both sides. After a bunch of math and measuring, comparing the old with the new, I was able to fab up custom seat frames using the feet cut off the original seats. The Audi seat center aligned with steering wheel center and achieved good range of motion front and back (Audi seats had a lot more travel than stock). I spliced in the factory connection to the Audi wiring, plugged them in and they worked as intended. I think the position is very similar to stock, maybe slightly higher. I'm 6'2" and you wouldn't have to be much taller than me before you had to start reclining. The width of the front seat bases forced me to delete the lower door pockets. A reasonable sacrifice in my opinion.
I knew the rears were going to be a challenge. Especially since I wanted to keep the stock fold forward functionality. The stock seats are a 50/50 split and the Audi seats are a 60/40 split. With the location of the stock spring mounted feet and latches I didn't think there was a good way to maintain the ability to allow both sides of the seats to fold separately so I settled on combining the whole row on one frame. I aligned the seats on the floor as they would sit in the vehicle and tacked up a frame that was the correct dimensions. I then harvested all the original seat hardware that attached the seats to the body, took the frame into the truck and began planning how I was going to arrange and reattach. Getting the front spring feet tacked to the new frame was no problem. Recreating the tucked rear latch functionality proved difficult. Initially I had tacked up everything identical to stock so the latches rotated and folded into the bottom of the seat with the stock connecting rods. It ended up that the new Audi seats had less room in their frame and I had to delete that functionality (welded them solid). Depending on the seat frame it is possible though. I had it working with the seats detached from the frame.
I also needed to create a way to release both seat latches at once. I cut off all the stock latch release hardware and began planning to combine both latch release mechanisms into one. After looking it over for a while I planned to trim one of them up flip it over, and weld them together so that they mirrored each other. I had to cut and round a small piece of sheet metal to attach the two spring loaded arms together. I located the new latch release mechanism in the front middle of the row so I can reach it from either side. There's a video in the stack below.
The middle seats ended up sitting higher than I wanted, but there was nothing I could do about it unless I started to cut up the seat frames. I have to recline back a little more than natural so my head doesn't hit the roof. The sunroof really isn't helping. It would probably be okay without it. Overall I am still very pleased. I won't be sitting in the back and very rarely am I hauling 2+ people taller than 6'0". The leftover wiring is from the Audi seat heaters (front and rear). Hopefully I will get those wired before winter. Overall I am very pleased for $300 and my own labor. I wish I took more pictures during the process. Let me know if there are any gaps in my explanation.
