stevlars Posted April 9, 2014 Share Posted April 9, 2014 If anyone is interested, I recently did a seat swap installing 1999 Honda Accord seats into my 1985 Toyota Dolphin. I'm a newbie with limited mechanical skills willing to attempt mechanical challenges outside my experience. I'm sure a professional would have cringed at my methodology, but I actually had a good time researching, purchasing seats from a wrecking yard and then cutting, drilling, hammering and adjusting the seats so that they fit. The oem Toyota seats were in decent shape for their age, but my back hurt just driving locally. I wanted a driver seat that had an adjustable bottom as well as seats that were non-electric. With tape measure in hand, I explored our small town wrecking yard and came across the Accord seats. The bolt hole pattern matched perfectly on the fronts. One of the rear bolt holes matched when the bracket was hammered a bit. I cut/shortened 3 of the Honda brackets and had to "design" one of my own for the inside rear bolt hole. Even with cut down mounting brackets these seats sit a little higher than the oem seats, but they are very comfortable to sit on for long drives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MontanaChinook Posted April 11, 2014 Share Posted April 11, 2014 Nice work! It's great to upgrade these old seats. Mine were the original 1978 toyota seats. Very uncomfortable. I used mid-90's Honda seats. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevlars Posted April 11, 2014 Author Share Posted April 11, 2014 How were the Honda seats you put in for height? Do you remember what model and year of Honda they came out of? I cut off all but one rear bracket and drilled bolt holes so that the seat(s) would sit as low as possible. I'm 5'10" and even "lowered" I can tell over time that I'm craning my neck because the seat is still a little high. The passenger seat is not an issue because my wife is not a giant and she seems to like sitting up a little higher. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MontanaChinook Posted April 11, 2014 Share Posted April 11, 2014 In the older trucks like mine, the seats sit really low. The Honda seats are no different. Someday I might actually make brackets to raise them up an inch or two. No..don't remember. I was in a junkyard with a bunch. Early 90's is my guess. No idea what model. I took the old seat tracks off my old seats and put them on the new seats. Just had to drill one hole for each track, and they bolted right in to my existing holes in the cab. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turtle Posted April 11, 2014 Share Posted April 11, 2014 A number of years ago I swapped out some BMW 320i seats in my old 1981 toyota diesel RV. The BMW seats had straight through bolts (everything went right through the rail into the floor pan) so it was easy to drill new holes and install them. A few pics Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MontanaChinook Posted April 11, 2014 Share Posted April 11, 2014 Pretty nice! I had some thoughts of finding some sports car seats, leather, heated...all that. But where I live there just aren't many of them, and I had the Honda seats sitting around from when I was going to install them in my 83 4x4, so I just used those. Huge improvement. I'm on a big trip right now, and they're really comfy. The only thing that starts to get to me is my shoulders, because the Chinook really takes two hands to drive, and since the seat is low, that means my arms are up kind of high. Otherwise they're great. The old seats were uncomfortable the second I sat down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.