New Seats (1 Viewer)

[paulj]

I finally got my new (salvage) seats installed in my 60. They're power, leather with adjustable lumbar, and they came from a '98 Camry. It took a bit of head scratching and trial and error to fab some brackets, but I finally got 'em in. Man, the difference in comfort is unbelievable! No more backache! Toyota's made a lot of progress in seat design between 1982 and 1998.

 

[tclndcrz]

i like them. very nice

 

[hammer1]

paulj,
Igotta ask. where do you get these things? a few weeks ago, a similar post came up, i think it was here, and the seats from a Mazda MPV wre used.
anyway....just for s***s and giggles, i called my local boneyard, and i can get the Mazda seats for 700 BUCKS!!!!!, and the Toyo's for 800!!!!!
used..from a scrapyard!!!!!!!
property taxes in NJ arent the only things overpriced...
hammer

 

[Cookiemonster]

Wow, looks great. You going to do anything with the back seat eventually?

 

[polarweasel]

hammer1, dude, you need to find a better junkyard. Ask around your local mechanics for ideas. Best bet is to find one that'll let you look around. I found a nice pair of BMW leather seats for my (former) FJ40 that way. I think I paid $50 for the two of them.

 

[paulj]

hammer; I hear you. The last time I went through this was a couple of years ago looking for seats for my 40. I went to 3 or 4 pick 'n pulls, and all I saw was a bunch of cr*p; ripped, burnt, rained on junk. I even went to an aircraft salvage place looking for some Recaro aircraft seats. I ended up getting Bestop J**p replacement seats. They're pretty nice, but not nearly as nice as the Camry seats.
I finally found a place near Ft. Worth that specializes in just Toyota salvage called Toyota Heaven. I have to say that it's probably the nicest salvage yard I've been to. The seats were already pulled and stored inside, so they were easy to inspect and measure. I don't know what to tell you if you're in New Jersey. You could call them. They had other Camry seats as I recall, though not all were electric or had lumbar. I saw a choclate brown pair (that I'm not sure were from a Camry but were similar in size and quality) and some grey ones. They had both cloth and leather seats. I paid $350 for the pair. The manual ones go for $300. A mechanic I know later told me he could have gotten them at a cheaper wholesale price. Ouch! Their number is (817) 572-1430. You can also look on Ebay under "autoparts". The big drawback for me was never knowing which seats fit a Cruiser. The Camry seats fit with no problem. Others have had luck with Volvo and other makes. Do a search. The other thing is that most seats have a thicker seat than stock Cruiser seats. The extra inch makes a big difference if you're tall. I'm 6'4". Fortunately, Cruisers have lots of headroom, but you do need to think about that when you make the brackets.

 

[paulj]

Wow, looks great. You going to do anything with the back seat eventually?

I'd like to get it covered to match, but that's kind of a back burner project. I'll just live with the 5 different colors in the interior for now.

 

[Tapage]

Wouu .. nice job, I think in this seats in a real mud bogging sesion, get dirty ..

 

[wingysataday]

look on ebay for seats. you can find some seats for really cheap. I was bidding on a pair of leather power, black range rover seats and they went up to $150 for 2. That is super cheap and they were from a 2002.

 

[Zack1978]

Paul,
Can you run through the steps of getting the seats to fit/work in the 60? What type of bracket did you use? I would like to do something like this in the future and I would like to know how to do it.

Thanks,
Zack

 

[swampymarsh]

Paul-
Ditto with what Zack reqeusted......please share!! Dave

 

[paulj]

O.K. First of all, the mounting points for the 60 seats are closer together from side to side, but farther apart from front to back than those for the Camry seats. The mounts are also angled differently. You could grind all the mounting brackets off the bottom of the Camry sliders and make up and weld on new ones, but I decided to simply make brackets that bridged the gap between the new seats and the mounting points on the 60. I didn’t change anything on the 60. I guess I’m kind of a stock purist.
For the front brackets I used 1 ¼” angle iron cut into 3 ½” lengths. I drilled a 7/16” hole for the bolt, lock washe,r and nut to attach to the hole in the floorboard. For where the new bracket attaches to the seat bracket I drilled a 23/64” hole and then threaded it to accept a 10mm bolt. (Note: leave at least one bolt per front set of brackets undrilled until installation as it’s too hard to get everything lined up otherwise.) Then I cut away part of the bracket and put it in a vice and heated it up with a torch (using Mapp gas) and cranked the vice until the angle was the same as the one on the seat. (see brackets on bottom of first photo)
For the rear inside brackets I used a piece of ¼” steel plate cut at an angle to connect from the stock mounting point to the seat bracket.
For the rear outside brackets I ran a piece of angle iron under the center console and between the driver’s and passenger side mounting points. To this I attached a small piece of angle iron with a bolt hole drilled into it and bent to the same angle as the bracket on the Camry seat.
All of the above probably sounds more complicated than it was. You just need to make sure that the brackets don’t make the seat mount too much higher than stock. If you’re installing electric seats you have to make sure that there’s clearance underneath them for all that apparatus, especially under the passenger seat where the rear heater unit is. Also remember to run all the wiring under the carpet from the seats to the fuse block.
It’s probably easiest to fab everything with a cutting torch and welder. Since I don’t have one I borrowed a friend’s sawzall with a metal cutting blade. It cuts through angle iron real easily.

 

[3puttcop]

Check out this link....Seats are much cheaper than the salvage yard seats.
http://www.motorsportseats.com/index.html

 

[paulj]

I've never seen Recaro seats that cheap. Are they the real thing, or knock-offs? Leather or vinyl? I once saw a pair of leather Recaros with a hole in the driver's seat go for $600 on Ebay. I thought leather Recaros go for like $1,000 each brand new. I'm not real unhappy with what I paid. Yeah, I read the post above about $50 for a pair of BMW seats, but for some reason I never find deals like that. The ones I've seen on Ebay usually go for as much or more and are always half way across the country.

 

[3puttcop]

I have yet to do business with that company, just had teh link saved for the day when i decide to tackle that project. My stockers look decent, no rips, just a little flat adn they smell like an attic.

 

[swampymarsh]

Thanks Paul......Looks as if I need to look for a set of camry seats!! Dave