Wanted something a little more comfortable than my well used standard seats in the 320i. A pair of E36 vaders in grey suede popped up last week and I managed to snag them for $450. This is a great deal down here as they don't come up forsale very often and when they do you usually have to part with $1000+ to secure them. So needless to say I was pretty happy with the price.
Started out by removing the old stock seat and just placing one of the vaders in there to get an idea of the difference.
Turns out it's not really a huge difference. I measured up the rails and made some templates to make up some adapter plates. Down here we need to get things inspected and passed by an engineer to make things all road legal. So while there may be easier ways to mount them, I'm going to make up plates that use the factory mounting points on both the floor pan and the new seat rails. They really frown on welding, so it's essentially going to bolt together.
These are the typical mounts you'll find out there for the seats. They work too and everything is right as far as dimensions go, but I wanted to play around with the position of the seats a little more. This is simply because the trans tunnel on an E30 is pretty wide, so they have a habit of pushing against your leg which can make it uncomfortable if you are even the slightest bit tall.
I started off by using some 75mmx5mm steel plate cut to length.
Marked out the holes for the floor pan bolts. The E36 mount is both wider and longer than the E30 ones.
Then got set to drilling some 11mm holes. Grab a hole punch and strike the centre to make a divot, then start with a smaller (example, 6mm) drill bit to make a pilot hole for the bigger bit. It's a pretty simple process, a little lubricating oil to keep the tip cool and let it do it's thing.
With the holes for the floor mounts drilled, I bolted the plates down into the floor pan using the original seat bolts. Plates now in place, I put one of the vaders on top and moved them around to position them as far towards the door as possible. Happy with the position, I simply marked the holes with the seat in place, double checked the markings to make sure they were the right distance to correspond with the seat, then set to drilling them out.
I used some 50mm M10x1.5 high tensile bolts placed on the underside to form the new studs for the vaders to mount to. Once I placed one of the seats back into position I found a couple of new problems. One of the original seat mounts is too high, it sticks out too far and fouls the seat rails so it needed a trim down. Just thread a nut down over the stud and wind it down until you have enough threads sticking out above to cut off. That way, if you damage any threads you simply wind off the nut, cleaning up the threads in the process. With it cut, I just took a flat file and cleaned up the head a little (not shown in the pic).
The second problem was because I mounted the seats so far towards the door to get them roughly in the same position as the stock seat. The tab around the right rear mount of the vaders would come into contact with the head of the bolt for the original E30 mount. It's very close, but an easy solution was to simply trim the mount a little. Both the original E30 seats and the E36 vaders have what basically works like a washer on the underside of the mount, it sticks out about 10mm past the flat plate piece I want to trim back. Basically all it seems to do is give something to press down against the carpet and keep it all nice and tidy. I just needed to trim a little bit off the side which seems like no big deal.
With that done, refitted the seat to make sure everything lined up perfectly. Presto! It did and the seat popped right over the new mounts.
Next up was to tackle the seat belt. My car is a 4 door which mounts the seat belt to the seat base itself unlike the 2 doors which use a rail. I did some searching on the forums and found a few people suggesting where to mount it, but most of the suggestions seemed wrong. One common one I found suggested that you pop the cover off the top plastic trim (the one with the levers) and it will allow you access to a hole to mount the belt. I checked this out, but there isn't actually anything under there to mount it to, so that is a dude. What I found instead is if you remove the lower plastic trim (it's just held on by one plastic push-clip, then the other end is slipped over the pin through the rail you can see in the 2nd photo) there is a hole in the rail for the seat belt which looks like a factory position. I simply used a combination of a high tensile bolt, some washers and the original spacer to mount the seat belt in place. Of course, nothing is simple and I came across a couple of problems.
First off, the E30 mount has a tab on the bottom that won't fit through into place against the seat base so it needs to be removed. Just cut it off with an angle grinder as it isn't needed (or a problem).
If you have a look at the lower plastic trim that goes over the seat rail, you'll see an outline of a rectangle. This is the piece you need to remove to fit the seat belt through and looks like it might be designed to do this from the factory if you have a 4 door. These seats are from a coupe so I can't known for sure, but it seems too convenient to be placed there for no reason. Regardless, Im going to use it anyway, so just take to it with a stanley (utility) knife to remove the plastic so you can pass the mount through. With the hole cut, just clean it up with a file or some sandpaper.
With the hole cut you can pass the seat belt mount through into the rail, however you'll come across a problem though. The angle of the seat belt is too sharp to fit up against the rail properly.
You need to bend the mount a little to take some of the angle out of it. A vice is handy, otherwise you can take to the back of the mount with a hammer and flatten it out a little. It doesn't need to bend far, just play it by ear.
Next up the seat belt mount needs to be spaced a little towards the seat, (pretty much as far as you can), so I used a combination of a high tensile bolt, a nut, some washers and the original spacer to mount the seat belt to the rail.
I still want to clean up the plastic a little and get the lines all nice and neat along with taking a little more angle out of the mount, but the end result should come out looking something like this.
Next up is the seat belt stalk. Pretty easy task this one, the E36 seats already have a place on the seat base for the stalk.
Again, the angle needs to be played around with as the stalk doesn't quite sit flush against the seat base.
If you take the stalk and place it in a vice you can use a large ring spanner to give it a little tweak.
And you should end up with something like this. There is just enough thread showing to screw the nut down all the way to the end of the bolt (I gave it a couple more turns after this pic), the E36 stalk must be slightly thinner than the E30 one.
With the stalk mounted to the seat, it was simply a matter of bolting the seat belt up to the seat base (as shown above) and placing the seat into the car for the final time. When fitting the nuts I came across another little problem though. The slider is a little narrow for the washers, so I simply ground a little off one side to get it to fit perfectly.
One side down and in.
Then it is simply a matter of repeating for the other side. One suggestion though, remove the steering wheel to give you a little more space.
People wondering how much space it leaves behind, well as I said earlier I played around with the mounting position so it may vary depending on how you mount it, but this is the space in the back of my car with the seat as far back as it goes. You can see the other stock seat in the background which is just about as far back as it goes too, so not a huge difference. I reckon there is maybe an inch in it.
You can fit into the back ok with the vaders fitted. It's a little tight getting in and out, but there is enough space to sit comfortably behind with your feet under the seat and the recline mechanism as these are coupe seats helps give you some easy access. You can't exactly stretch your feet out, but then you couldn't really do that anyway with the standard seats either.
I plan to clean up the shape of the plates properly when I find out exactly what the rules are in regards to getting them engineered and passed for a mod plate (required in this country). This is the rough shape if the engineer says I am allowed to cut the plates, but for the time being they will stay like they are. Once it is signed off on I'll actually pass the plates through under the carpet then make a couple of small cuts so the bolts mounting the vaders in place can poke through. With the carpet back down you won't even notice them in place, will just look like a regular seat mount.
That's basically it. Might not be the only way, but it is one way to do it without having to actually weld anything. It still utilises the original mounts on both the seats and the floor pan too, so everything essentially bolts into place. By using the original seat belt positions on the new seats along with high tensile bolts everywhere, it should be just as safe as the original seats. :)
Started out by removing the old stock seat and just placing one of the vaders in there to get an idea of the difference.
Turns out it's not really a huge difference. I measured up the rails and made some templates to make up some adapter plates. Down here we need to get things inspected and passed by an engineer to make things all road legal. So while there may be easier ways to mount them, I'm going to make up plates that use the factory mounting points on both the floor pan and the new seat rails. They really frown on welding, so it's essentially going to bolt together.
These are the typical mounts you'll find out there for the seats. They work too and everything is right as far as dimensions go, but I wanted to play around with the position of the seats a little more. This is simply because the trans tunnel on an E30 is pretty wide, so they have a habit of pushing against your leg which can make it uncomfortable if you are even the slightest bit tall.
I started off by using some 75mmx5mm steel plate cut to length.
Marked out the holes for the floor pan bolts. The E36 mount is both wider and longer than the E30 ones.
Then got set to drilling some 11mm holes. Grab a hole punch and strike the centre to make a divot, then start with a smaller (example, 6mm) drill bit to make a pilot hole for the bigger bit. It's a pretty simple process, a little lubricating oil to keep the tip cool and let it do it's thing.
With the holes for the floor mounts drilled, I bolted the plates down into the floor pan using the original seat bolts. Plates now in place, I put one of the vaders on top and moved them around to position them as far towards the door as possible. Happy with the position, I simply marked the holes with the seat in place, double checked the markings to make sure they were the right distance to correspond with the seat, then set to drilling them out.
I used some 50mm M10x1.5 high tensile bolts placed on the underside to form the new studs for the vaders to mount to. Once I placed one of the seats back into position I found a couple of new problems. One of the original seat mounts is too high, it sticks out too far and fouls the seat rails so it needed a trim down. Just thread a nut down over the stud and wind it down until you have enough threads sticking out above to cut off. That way, if you damage any threads you simply wind off the nut, cleaning up the threads in the process. With it cut, I just took a flat file and cleaned up the head a little (not shown in the pic).
The second problem was because I mounted the seats so far towards the door to get them roughly in the same position as the stock seat. The tab around the right rear mount of the vaders would come into contact with the head of the bolt for the original E30 mount. It's very close, but an easy solution was to simply trim the mount a little. Both the original E30 seats and the E36 vaders have what basically works like a washer on the underside of the mount, it sticks out about 10mm past the flat plate piece I want to trim back. Basically all it seems to do is give something to press down against the carpet and keep it all nice and tidy. I just needed to trim a little bit off the side which seems like no big deal.
With that done, refitted the seat to make sure everything lined up perfectly. Presto! It did and the seat popped right over the new mounts.
Next up was to tackle the seat belt. My car is a 4 door which mounts the seat belt to the seat base itself unlike the 2 doors which use a rail. I did some searching on the forums and found a few people suggesting where to mount it, but most of the suggestions seemed wrong. One common one I found suggested that you pop the cover off the top plastic trim (the one with the levers) and it will allow you access to a hole to mount the belt. I checked this out, but there isn't actually anything under there to mount it to, so that is a dude. What I found instead is if you remove the lower plastic trim (it's just held on by one plastic push-clip, then the other end is slipped over the pin through the rail you can see in the 2nd photo) there is a hole in the rail for the seat belt which looks like a factory position. I simply used a combination of a high tensile bolt, some washers and the original spacer to mount the seat belt in place. Of course, nothing is simple and I came across a couple of problems.
First off, the E30 mount has a tab on the bottom that won't fit through into place against the seat base so it needs to be removed. Just cut it off with an angle grinder as it isn't needed (or a problem).
If you have a look at the lower plastic trim that goes over the seat rail, you'll see an outline of a rectangle. This is the piece you need to remove to fit the seat belt through and looks like it might be designed to do this from the factory if you have a 4 door. These seats are from a coupe so I can't known for sure, but it seems too convenient to be placed there for no reason. Regardless, Im going to use it anyway, so just take to it with a stanley (utility) knife to remove the plastic so you can pass the mount through. With the hole cut, just clean it up with a file or some sandpaper.
With the hole cut you can pass the seat belt mount through into the rail, however you'll come across a problem though. The angle of the seat belt is too sharp to fit up against the rail properly.
You need to bend the mount a little to take some of the angle out of it. A vice is handy, otherwise you can take to the back of the mount with a hammer and flatten it out a little. It doesn't need to bend far, just play it by ear.
Next up the seat belt mount needs to be spaced a little towards the seat, (pretty much as far as you can), so I used a combination of a high tensile bolt, a nut, some washers and the original spacer to mount the seat belt to the rail.
I still want to clean up the plastic a little and get the lines all nice and neat along with taking a little more angle out of the mount, but the end result should come out looking something like this.
Next up is the seat belt stalk. Pretty easy task this one, the E36 seats already have a place on the seat base for the stalk.
Again, the angle needs to be played around with as the stalk doesn't quite sit flush against the seat base.
If you take the stalk and place it in a vice you can use a large ring spanner to give it a little tweak.
And you should end up with something like this. There is just enough thread showing to screw the nut down all the way to the end of the bolt (I gave it a couple more turns after this pic), the E36 stalk must be slightly thinner than the E30 one.
With the stalk mounted to the seat, it was simply a matter of bolting the seat belt up to the seat base (as shown above) and placing the seat into the car for the final time. When fitting the nuts I came across another little problem though. The slider is a little narrow for the washers, so I simply ground a little off one side to get it to fit perfectly.
One side down and in.
Then it is simply a matter of repeating for the other side. One suggestion though, remove the steering wheel to give you a little more space.
People wondering how much space it leaves behind, well as I said earlier I played around with the mounting position so it may vary depending on how you mount it, but this is the space in the back of my car with the seat as far back as it goes. You can see the other stock seat in the background which is just about as far back as it goes too, so not a huge difference. I reckon there is maybe an inch in it.
You can fit into the back ok with the vaders fitted. It's a little tight getting in and out, but there is enough space to sit comfortably behind with your feet under the seat and the recline mechanism as these are coupe seats helps give you some easy access. You can't exactly stretch your feet out, but then you couldn't really do that anyway with the standard seats either.
I plan to clean up the shape of the plates properly when I find out exactly what the rules are in regards to getting them engineered and passed for a mod plate (required in this country). This is the rough shape if the engineer says I am allowed to cut the plates, but for the time being they will stay like they are. Once it is signed off on I'll actually pass the plates through under the carpet then make a couple of small cuts so the bolts mounting the vaders in place can poke through. With the carpet back down you won't even notice them in place, will just look like a regular seat mount.
That's basically it. Might not be the only way, but it is one way to do it without having to actually weld anything. It still utilises the original mounts on both the seats and the floor pan too, so everything essentially bolts into place. By using the original seat belt positions on the new seats along with high tensile bolts everywhere, it should be just as safe as the original seats. :)
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