I've been searching and watching this forum looking for a solution to the front seats in my truck. I have a bad back, and no Toyota I have every sat in has been comfortable for me, certainly including the 80. Of course it doesn't hurt than the foam is a hard as a rock, and the leather is too, along with being cracked and split. This truck is a hobby and the budget is limited, so $1k for new leather and replacement foam just wasn't in the cards.
Last week I noticed a set of BMW E46 seats in the classifieds modified to fit an FJ60. A set of sport seats happened to turn up locally for a good price, so I bought them to give this swap a shot in an FJ80.
Before I go any further, this swap requires a modification to the truck. It is minor IMO, but may not be in yours. Take it for what it is.
Let's get started. Here are the seats:
E46 sports seats, fully manual adjustments. They are supposed to be heated, but I am not going to worry about hooking that up until the fall, if I get around to it at all. The only thing missing is lumbar adjustments, but they feel perfect as is so I doubt I will miss that much.
The rails are on a wider footprint than the stock seats, 18" vs 13.5". They just so happen to be 2" wider on each side. This is where our first vehicle modification comes in.
The stamping that the seat mount to up front is basically a top hat shaped piece of steel. It goes over the transmission hump. The wider rails of the BMW seats interfere with this if you want the seats centered on the steering wheel. If you don't care about that, they will fit offset, but I do not like that arrangement.
I cut the carpet around the stamping. Using a cold chisel, I split the steel down the center, then hammered it in to flatten the stamping. This all took maybe 5 minutes. Once I was done, the flap of carpet covers the floor as before.
Once this was done, it was on to making adapters to mount the seats. The front is easy, it is just a piece of 1 1/2" X 1/8" angle iron cut 19.25" long, with holes drilled on both flanges.
The rear two adapters were more involved. The mounting points in the floor are at different elevations. For the left mount, I stacked two pieces of angle iron, resulting in a height of 1.625". They were welded along all seams, and the corners cut to avoid any pointy edges.
The right side ended up being 2.75" in height. That would only leave .25" for a lap joint, which I did not feel comfortable with. I ended up piecing that out of four pieces and welding all of the joints.
Finally, a picture of the seat in the truck. The color is not a match at all, but frankly I prefer this color of the factory color.
Finally, the seat belt latch is integrated into the seat on the BMW seat just like the stock seat. It just so happens the Toyota buckle from the second or third row seat belts fits perfectly. The front row does not. Why exactly Toyota would use two different size belt buckles is beyond me, but they did.
Since I do not use the third row seats, I decided to see what it would take to use it up front. I ended up swapping the belt front the third row retractor to the front retractor. The belts themselves are within 6" of each other, with the third row being shorter. It is plenty long enough for me.
Driving impressions, the seat is a big improvement over the stock seat. The height of the seat is exactly the same as the stock seat. I did not have to adjust the rear view mirror when all was said and done
I am 5'9", am long in the torso, and have a 30" inseam. There is plenty of fore and aft adjustment for me, but you long legged folks may need to mount the seat further back.
