how to install WRX seats / sort of !!

[half k cruiser]

Since several have asked me about details on this I will document my WRX seat swap here. My OEM seats were very hard and uncomfortable, and they don't exactly give you a lot of leg room or adjustment range. Because I want to do several road trips this year changing seats has been high on my priority's list. So I spent a few weeks checking the craigslist and finally scrounged these from some guy living in the carriage house behind a mansion in Kansas City ( true story ).

Originally the seller was asking $200 and the seats were in very good condition with a few exceptions. For starters I noticed right away that they had no sliders and that somebody had tried welding some sort of bracket to the bottoms. Then I noticed they were missing the female seatbelt buckle. This was nearly a deal breaker for me as I get the parts that I needed. I decided to offer $100 for the pair and away I went, the proud new owner of an almost complete set of WRX seats.

 

[half k cruiser]

First things first, how am I going to make these slide. A quick look around Summit Racing netted me two sets of these ... http://www.summitracing.com/parts/s...crq20duQViupnVLKqdCeQEyF_C9W26AlKjRoC0vvw_wcB
Originally thinking this could be a bolt together affair I moved on to the mounting options. These easiest option for me was to simply reuse the feet from the OEM seats. Not only are they a perfect fit, but, once bolted to the floor they are all four perfectly level with each other. Next step, remove the OEM feet from the seat rails. The easiest way by far is to take a grinder to the little button looking thing that holds the foot to the rail. After this is done you use a punch and a BFH to drive that little pin out. The feet can take a little more coaxing but its not hard to figure out how to get them off.

Grind the button off then hit this with a hammer and punch.....

When you are done getting all four go ahead and bolt them back down to your floor pan.

 

[half k cruiser]

Now, here is where installs may differ. If you have a set of seats with sliders already on them you essentially only need to create a box frame to bolt down the rails of your sliders. You will need four pieces of angle iron, two of which will run from the front feet to the back feet on either side and two of which will run the other direction overlapping the other pieces of iron. You could weld all of this together, then weld your sliders to it and be done. Since my seats didn't come with sliders I opted to use the universal ones I got from Summit as the bottom portion of the box out. The following pictures will explain better then I can.

The camera adds 10lbs of dirt to your floorboards .

 

[half k cruiser]

These brackets need to be pretty much square to each other or the sliders are going to bind up as there angles diverge. Essentially what has been done in the above photos is I have adapted up from the LC roughly 14'' spacing between seat rails to the WRX roughly 18'' between seat rails. The top two pieces of angle iron were measured carefully to get as close to the transmission tunnel as possible without catching on anything. After that I simply marked them and drilled the holes with a drill press. Once all of this is bolted together its time to figure out how to attach the seat to the new bracket. First things first, I removed this jankety old setup that the previous seat owner had tried to fab up.....

I was then left with this. As you can see there's not a lot of meat left on that bone.

Wanting to get more contact area between the seat and the new bracket I decided to weld in some strips of 3/16'' bar stock.

 

[half k cruiser]

Once these new pads are installed on the seat bottoms its time to fit them to the brackets. This part is more simple then you would think. Since I forgot to mention it earlier you should have already removed the bottom seat cushion. This is going to allow you to see what you are doing as well as get your welder into position to tack everything together. Once the seat was centered the way I wanted it I simply clamped it down with some big C type vice grips. Then out came the fiberglass blanket and some cardboard to act as makeshift shields. After everything is in position I tacked all four corners of the seat pads to the seat bracket. When all done it looks something like this.

I pulled the seats in and out numerous times making sure the feet would line up proper. After I was certain, I torqued all bolts then laid the final welds down. Every seam gets welded up and all bolts are tacked into position. Then comes the final install.

Followed by some plastic trim.

 

[half k cruiser]

Now to fix that trim color. Found a can of this at the local hardware store.

Now it looks like this !

 

[half k cruiser]

I almost forgot, remember how I mentioned there were no female seatbelt buckles when I bought these seats ? Turns out you can just unbolt the OEM Toyota ones and bolt them right onto the Subaru seat. Do you see those two little tabs on the seatbelt buckle ? One of those needs to be ground off in order to fit up nice. Its easy to tell which one after you play with it a little.

 

[half k cruiser]

When its all done it should look something like this .....

 

[half k cruiser]

Disclaimer:
1. Yes, the flag in the above photo is not properly folded. I retrieved it from a relative who finally bought a new one. This one is missing about the last third of its stripes and I didn't have a second person to help me get it nice and crisp. I am arranging for its proper disposal later this week.

2. No, I am not a professional welder and believe it or not you can tell ! In fact I had never even turned a welder on until this project. Knowing I would need some welds and not wanting to pay or wait for someone else to do it I went out and bought a cheap HF 90 amp and tried to self teach in the back bay at work. Sometimes the welds look good and sometimes they don't. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing that makes the difference between the two. In any case I will continue to practice and if anybody has any pointers or good links to some videos I'm all ears.

 

[nukegoat]

All win. Great job

 

[greentruck]

Thanks for the write up. The paint match for the oak interior is handy all on its own. That's what had me thinking you'd recycled the plastic shroud around the side of the track. It looked factory.

 

[Mr Cimarron]

Great job. Better seats are alway in the back of my mind just never seem to get to that project.

 

[scrowley]

nice work. Looks more comfortable from here!

 

[jeffro109]

How is the seat height compared to OEM? These look to be sitting pretty high, but it might just be the trim/camera angle.

 

[half k cruiser]

Thanks guys. Like I said this isn't the ideal swap, ideally you would already have the sliders from whatever seat you chose. However, the concept will be pretty much the same regardless of that fact. Something to note is that these seats do sit up higher then the OEM so its important to get your mount as low as possible. You could lower it an additional inch if you did away with the stock feet and built your own. However, then you would have to be real careful about getting them all the same height.

 

[tlin]

Nice work, sir.

Now go get a vacuum and clean up that carpet. It'll be even more comfortable!

 

[half k cruiser]

Nice work, sir.

Now go get a vacuum and clean up that carpet. It'll be even more comfortable!

You sir are an ahole

 

[SNLC]

Well done and good write up!

I essentially did the same thing to mount up a ProCar Elite in my 80. Don't know why people seem to struggle so much with different seats in the 60/62/80. It is really easy to do if you cut/drill the old feet off the stock seats. For the Procar I got their universal seat mount. Cut the feet off the stock seat. Bolted stock feet in place in the truck. Set the universal mount on the feet. Made sure I liked it all and clearances were good to go. Welded feet to universal mount. Done deal.

http://scatenterprises.com/blog/new-universal-adaptor-kit/

I didn't use the flat bar that comes with the kit. And a guy could make this for cheap but the universal mount is fairly cheap. With the Procar slider you have built in height adjustment which I really like a lot. Three height adjustments in the Procar set up. I am 5ft 11" and I like the seating position as high as possible. Like a bus!

Cheers

 

[jkdowty]

Disclaimer: if anybody has any pointers or good links to some videos I'm all ears.

Welding Tips and Tricks - TIG, MIG, Stick and a pantload of other info
I'm a weld test administrator for the company I work for and I make all my welding trainees watch the videos from here! Great teachings. I've even learned a thing or two from him.

 

[half k cruiser]

Welding Tips and Tricks - TIG, MIG, Stick and a pantload of other info
I'm a weld test administrator for the company I work for and I make all my welding trainees watch the videos from here! Great teachings. I've even learned a thing or two from him.

I appreciate the links and I will certainly be viewing them. I will say after switching from my HF 90amp to a Hobart 140, well, the welder really was a lot of the problem. I also installed a dedicated circuit for the Hobart. It was such a big difference I actually went back and ground the welds from my seats and re welded with the Hob.