Jaguar seats for the Mean Green Bean, Minor update, Jag back seat tables! (1 Viewer)

[Rusty Marlin]

Like most, my front seats are trashed too.
I took my wife to the Pull-A-Part (Pull-A-Part: Columbia Auto Salvage & Used Auto Parts Un-Junkyard), and we poked around looking at various high end car's seats.
The Jag's S-Type are narrow, same width or possibly an inch narrower than stock and with dead flat aluminum extrusion on the mounting face.
The Rail width is only 2 1/2" wider than stock.
They have the same basic functions with the addition of lumbar support for the passenger side too.

Here they are as we hauled them home.

Passanger side front

Passenger side, side view

I'll get some better shots of the bottoms and how they get wired up. Should be a fairly simple conversion considering the narrowness of the rails.
My time is pretty tight through the rest of the month, so don't expect light speed progress.
The narrowness concerns me a little, neither of us are what anyone would describe as svelte. So I'll preserve the stock wiring and original seats until we can give them a thorough test ride.

 

[450LX]

 

[Rusty Marlin]

Tonight I confirmed wiring and function.

there must be 8 wires coming off the plug.
Only 4 mean anything. The largest red and black and the smallest read and black. The rest just terminate at the plug. Red Herrings.
The two large wires are main power for the seat. The two small wires are for the "air bag enable" mass sensor switch.

Using my handy dandy 13V 10A power supply I hooked the beasty up and made it dance.

All the way "back".

All the way "foward".

All other functions were confirmed to to be working. So I set it all the way back and as high as the seat would go to leave room for working under it.
Step one Complete, the 's new throne works!

 

[Rusty Marlin]

Feet attachment.
The front feet are held by a bolt a and a swaged rivet.

My guess is the bolt holds the lead screw nut in place and it will need to be preserved in its current location with the addition of the MGB's new seat bracketry
The rivet head will be drilled out and removed.
The rear feet are held on with swaged rivets.

 

[Rusty Marlin]

an aside, the "a$$ present" wiring plug is different from any other I've seen, it has a safety bar. The red slider is the safety.
Locked

Open

 

[mudgudgeon]

an aside, the "a$$ present" wiring plug is different from any other I've seen, it has a safety bar. The red slider is the safety.
Locked

Open

Yellow connectors are typically for air bags and supplementary restraint systems. I'd be leaving it disconnected completely to prevent an accidental pop

 

[Rusty Marlin]

I'll look again but I didn't see any airbags in the side bolsters of the seats, they are usually marked clearly on the outside panels with SRS.
I will also trace the wires to be absolutely certain that they are purely for the pressure switch which arms the passenger seat airbag in the dash.
If its just an arming circuit, there should be no POP as the firing signal is generated from the acceleration module under the shifter console.

Do you think I'm incorrect in the last statement above? Not being argumentative, legitimately asking if you think I missed something. I don't want a POP, but I would like to keep the arming circuit for the Pass side airbag.

 

[Rusty Marlin]

Feb 22 progress
Pulled the passenger seat out of The Bean. Stripped the feet, similar procedure to the Jag seat's feet. No going back now, fully dedicated.
Used 2" x 3/16" flat stock to create new bases.
Put the feet in the truck mounted the flat stock biased to the inside of the seat to provide clearance for the Jag seats new hardware.
Currently the structure is welded and are separate left and right assemblies.
The inboard back corner is lower than the others by about an inch, not sure what I'm going to do to correct this when new seat goes on.

I was going to bolt the supports directly to the Aluminum rail, but there is a clearance issue as seen here.
The brass bar is pointing to the links that run the seat base up and down. They will hit the new under frame rails mounted to the truck.

So I had to add a spacer, used more of the 2 x 3/16 bar as a full length spacer. Here its being bolted into the side I did not completely remove the moving side of the rail from the seat. The socket is passing through the mounting hole for the gear box that runs the drive screw.

 

[Rusty Marlin]

I pulled one side of the seats moving portion of the linear rail completely off to use it as a pattern for the mounting brackets and spacers.
The bearings came out, these may be a ROYAL BIOCH to put back in, probably going to need a custom tool, we'll find out.

Here I'm using a transfer punch to locate the holes onto the steel.

For those that haven't used transfer punches, you strike them lightly, they are for transferring location, not for creating a center punch mark.
Here is the difference, the transfer mark is on the left, another mark re-struck with the center punch is on right.

Before I put the linear bearing back in, I'll use the same rail to create all the new steel parts for the Driver's Side seat.
Here's one side assembled. It will be welded as well as bolted together before I'm finished. The other side is completed but not attached. I'm going to take it back apart to use as the pattern for the DS seat.
The tabs sticking to the right mount on the rails in the truck.

The large hole at the top is for the lead-screw nut's alignment boss.

 

[Rusty Marlin]

Oh yeah almost forget, the LC 80 doesn't have an arming circut for the airbag based on an in seat pressure switch. So I'll just leave it out.
The seat belt anchor attachment is different, its going to need an extension to reach the Jag's mounting position. Need to get that ordered up tonight.

 

[Rusty Marlin]

So I'll preserve the stock wiring and original seats until we can give them a thorough test ride.

That was an exceptionally naive comment, there is no preserving the factory seat, once the feet are knocked off, its full speed ahead on the new seat.
The factory wiring can be preserved, and there are no mods made to the floor pan of the truck, if it truly goes pear shaped and I need to return to stock configuration I'll need to find some new LC 80 donor seats.

 

[Rusty Marlin]

Played with the 's seat some more last night.
The welded up rails attached to the floor pan were hosed, I messed up the location of the inner and outer front feet. I was so careful to remove one side at a time and then remount just the feet into the truck too. I have no idea how I F'd that up, but I did.
Cut everything apart with the 4" angle grinder and reset, leveled and tack welded the bracketry that mounts to the floor pan.
The seat sits level now and is mounted to the floor brackets with bolts to hold it all straight and square, need to fully weld everything and wire the seat.
Camera batteries died, I'll show how I squared, and more importantly leveled, the bracketry tomorrow before I permanently weld it all together. (gotta buy batteries).
The good news is, it sits level and square with the rest of the truck, the gained an extra 3" of leg room, and the linear bearings that I thought were going to be a royal bitch to install, where a piece of cake once they were solvent cleaned and slathered in white lithium grease.

The Jag seat is HUGE in comparison to the LC seats, while it isn't any wider it is significantly taller, I'll show a picture of this so y'all can see.

 

[Rusty Marlin]

Success! Its mounted, wired and approved!

So Friday I figured out what went wrong last weekend, and fixed it.
The trick is how do you level something in a vehicle that is inherently not level? The short answer, you don't level it, you align it.
I took a heavy solid steel bar and laid it across the flat area under the rear seats. Then attached a digital protractor and zeroed it to the bar.

After mounting the feet, (in the correct location) I laid the new stringers front to rear and clamped a known flat "I beam" across the rear. This forces the top faces of the stringers into a parallel condition. They aren't clamped to the feet at this time, just the "I beam". The protractor is moved to the "I beam" and level is checked. Its also checked across the front to confirm there's no twist.

Close enough for the .
It needed a 1/2 SAE washer under the inboard rear foot to get the frame level.
The fronts were spot on as stock.

 

[Rusty Marlin]

Now the location of the stringers is set based on the seat base.
I made an analog of the new seat frame out of a 2x4.
The blacked out area is the Jag seat frame, the notch cut is to mimic the outer most side of the moving linear rail for the forward and back seat adjustment.

I mounted the new seat so the fixed portion of the base is behind the hump that the front bolts are mounted in. This sets the seats furthest inboard location at the lowest possible height.

Once the width of the stringers was determined, the outside stringer was squared to the "I beam". The the inside stringer was squared to the beam, this ensures they are running parallel.

Everything is double checked against the analog, rechecked with the digital protractor, then the feet are clamped to the stringers.
NOTE: Before pulling the front bolts, pull the rears, and adjust the feet till the mounting holes in the body pan show centered in the foot's slot.

Everything is double checked again, then the bolts are pulled, making sure nothing is warped by the clamps and the feet are tacked on to the stringers.

Feet are mounted (lightly) and the stringers are flat to each other.

So far so good.

 

[Rusty Marlin]

The left and right stringers were remounted into the truck and using the previously seat-frame-mounted adapters ( see post 9) The seat was placed on top of the stringers. Clamped into proper location, and match drilled and bolted to the stringers in the rear on both sides.

The entire seat and new bracketry was then removed and the forward tabs (from post 9) were match drilled and bolted.
Following shows the upper tab bolted to the stringer and prepped for weld.

Once everything was match mated and bolted together all the joints were marked for weld prep. Everything disassembled (again) and the parts prepped for weld.
All corners were properly beveled and all faces had the mill scale knocked off with the 4" angle grinder and a 120 grit flap disk.

All joints were tacked together and the then the fasteners were pulled out. The Nylock nuts that hold the whole bracket assembly to the seat base would have been melted from the weld heat.
Single pass welds from a Hobart 100 with .035 flux core wire. Set at 4 (high) and 70 IPM wire feed.

The LX seat has a long enough pig tail on the seat side of the plug to cut it off and splice it into the Jag wiring.

and properly Dressed.

 

[Rusty Marlin]

Finally.....
Its in! YEAH ME!

Seating height is about an inch higher than stock.
The picked up 3 inches of leg room and she likes the slightly higher position, better visibility.
The rear seats still fold up with the seat moved forward slightly from full rear position.
Now to repeat the performance with the DS.

 

[mudgudgeon]

Now the location of the stringers is set based on the seat base.
I made an analog of the new seat frame out of a 2x4.
The blacked out area is the Jag seat frame, the notch cut is to mimic the outer most side of the moving linear rail for the forward and back seat adjustment.

I mounted the new seat so the fixed portion of the base is behind the hump that the front bolts are mounted in. This sets the seats furthest inboard location at the lowest possible height.

Once the width of the stringers was determined, the outside stringer was squared to the "I beam". The the inside stringer was squared to the beam, this ensures they are running parallel.

Everything is double checked against the analog, rechecked with the digital protractor, then the feet are clamped to the stringers.
NOTE: Before pulling the front bolts, pull the rears, and adjust the feet till the mounting holes in the body pan show centered in the foot's slot.

Everything is double checked again, then the bolts are pulled, making sure nothing is warped by the clamps and the feet are tacked on to the stringers.

Feet are mounted (lightly) and the stringers are flat to each other.

So far so good.

Fun and games!

I did similar, but went high tech and used a construction line laser when I did mine.

Definitely a pain having four feet all at different heights.

 

[Rusty Marlin]

I'm resurrecting this thread for a change of seating.
The new seat, while perfect for my Bride is less than ideal for my son and some taller friends.
And because of the that, I never did get around to changing out the driver's side.
The wife and I went to the pick'npull today and came home with new seats from an '98-XJ8.
the frame rail is 15" wide, almost identical to the LC80 and they sit much flatter. This will allow them to get lower in the passenger compartment and not cramp my son's head against the sunroof cover, he has to slide it back so he doesn't hit his head, ... must be the mailman's kid...

So stay tuned, this will be a Christmas Break (I hope), or shortly thereafter, adventure.

 

[Rusty Marlin]

I'm resurrecting this thread for a change of seating.
The new seat, while perfect for my Bride is less than ideal for my son and some taller friends.
And because of the that, I never did get around to changing out the driver's side.
The wife and I went to the pick'npull today and came home with new seats from an '98-XJ8.
the frame rail is 15" wide, almost identical to the LC80 and they sit much flatter. This will allow them to get lower in the passenger compartment and not cramp my son's head against the sunroof cover, he has to slide it back so he doesn't hit his head, ... must be the mailman's kid...

So stay tuned, this will be a Christmas Break (I hope), or shortly thereafter, adventure.

Dangit! Got one roughed in quick this afternoon and its the same headroom (or lack there of) as the current Jag seat....Crap. They are so pretty too.

 

[Rusty Marlin]

Please keep your tray table and seat back up for the duration of the off-road experience.