Front seat swap

[DoloWIGHTY]

Hi,

Can anyone tell me please, is it possible to swap out the front seats?

I have a good spare passenger seat, will it bolt to the runners of the driver's seat, I know the handle for the back rest adjustment will now be on the inside but this doesn't bother me, that said, is there anything else which will be different?

Thanks.

[xvivalve]

Not without modification Alan; the driver's seat has a different framework beneath it and different runners fixed to the floor. You could replace the driver's runners with a pair of passenger runners as an 'easy' solution, but then you'd lose all the fore and aft tilt adjustment that the driver's framework and runners provide.

I'm sure it might be possible to swap the framework from the seat bases over, but you'd need to strip both seats down to do it

[DoloWIGHTY]

Thanks Alun, appreciate your reply, time and knowledge.

It just happens I do have a spare set of passenger seat runners .

Problem is it needs to be a quick swap out as I need to remove the driver's seat, do the swap and then install the replacement whilst the car is on the driveway, just looking into the quickest achievable way of doing that, so, I think I have the answer in that I fit the spare passenger seat runners to the "new" driver seat and should be a bolt out, bolt in job, I and not too concerned about the driver seat multi adjustment as I am the only one who ever drives the car, whilst it's a great feature if multiple people were driving it its not something really needed today.

I'll update here once I have found time to do the swap out.

Cheers again

[Richard the old one]

When I purchased one of my 1500HLs it had a passenger side seat fitted on the drivers side and I took it out and replaced it with a drivers side seat. I think it was a simple straight out and replace task.

When removing the front seats the thing to remember is to take out the front securing bolts first so that you can move the seat far enough forward to get at the rear bolts.

[xvivalve]

A tip when removing seat runner bolts is to check the underside of the car where the bolts protrude through the captive nuts. Road grime/rust/underseal etc will have collected on the bolt ends and can have a couple of very annoying consequences; as the bolt tightens as you attempt to draw it up through the captive nut I have experienced both the captive nut coming adrift from the floor pan, and even more inconveniently the bolt shearing and leaving half its length stuck in the nut.

It's well worth wire brushing the ends of the bolts to clean off the threads and dosing with plus gas before attempting removal.

[DoloWIGHTY]

Cheers.

Yes, captive bolts are just a memory on my car now, had them bolted through for may years now, a real pain to do as you need to hold the head from spinning inside the car whilst undoing the nuts from the underneath!

Anyway I got the seat out yesterday and had a change of plan.

I swapped out just the seat cushion from the passenger seat to the driver's seat.


"new" cushion at the top



Original getting very thin and the foam disintegrating




All done, very happy with the result.