I had previously installed some seats from a WRX and due to having to be mounted closer to the centre of the cabin to clear the rear storage bins, they were all but touching each other. Now that I have modified the position of the bins, it was time to remake the seat mounts. But... I recently drove a friends' Hyundai i30 and was impressed by the comfort, support and look of the seats but more importantly they were much narrower than the WRX seats! So I sourced a pair of them a few days later. The donor car (2013 i30 with 45,000km) had an frontal accident and the seats were a bargain at $200 for the pair
Another issue I had with the WRX seats was that they were mounted on top of the cross member to retain the sliding rails in case any one else drove the car, but my head was just too close to the roof. With the i30 seats, I decided to remove the rails and have them in a fixed position (and not care about who else would drive the car
) and also closer to the floor.
First thing was to make some MDF pieces for the base so I could shuffle the seats around and determine the final position and height I wanted.
The new seats had better lateral spacing and much better headroom
Using a simple frame to replicate the bolt holes in the seat base...
...the mounts were made so have the seats as low as possible (60mm off the floorpan). The height was limited by the clearance to the exhaust tunnel
and one useful feature I incorporated was a hole in the front mount so that once the mounts are bolted to the seats, the whole things slides onto a pair of locating pins that are in the backside of the cross-member, and that lines up all the holes in the floorpan. The holes in the floor are reinforced with 3mm steel plate welded to the underside.
Once the seats were bolted in, I then had to trim away some of the plastic cover on the side of the seats to clear the cross member.
Thanks to moving the rear bins rearward, the seats are closer to the door.
Note that the factory Mini steering column is now reeeally offset to the centreline of the drivers seat so it's a good thing that I'll be fitting a modern collapsible steering column (engineering requirement) in a more ergonomic position.
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-Alan
I blame my dad for my love of minis. I think I was conceived in the back seat of one
I also blame my Dad for me being 6' 1" - not really the optimum height for driving a Mini.