Junkyard Leather Seats That Will Fit in a 69 Camaro

[OBeer-WAN-Kenobi]

Originally Posted by fishface

I would like to see some pics when you get them installed Obeer. That is one seat I haven't looked at. When I was looking all I found was seats that had bolsters broken down, rips etc. So I got discouraged. I sat in a set in a Saturn Ion that were uncomfortable, to me at least.

No problem. I was hoping to do it this weekend but I had other stuff to do.

I did have time to clean up the seats though. They were really dirty when I got them and frankly, looked like hell. But I thought they'd clean up nice and I was right. They look really good, especially for $100.

[OBeer-WAN-Kenobi]

My uncle and I took the passenger seat out and started trying to fit the Tiburon seats last night.

Where your butt sits, the seats are about the same width as the stock Camaro seats and about the same height so that's really good; unfortunately, the track width is around 5" wider and the length between the holes is about 2.5" longer IIRC. Among other things, this will cause the seat bottom to be a bit higher off the floor than stock. This may be a problem for me.

I think we will get them to work, but it's not an easy install if you want to use the stock hole locations in the floor. That's what I'd like to do. So we are going to need to fab up some fairly intricate adapter brackets. The biggest challenge will be keeping the seats low enough that I can still get under the steering wheel and not hit my head on the ceiling.

We're going to make a temporary bracket out of 16ga to adjust and place where we want and then make the final one out of "real" metal once we've figured everything out.

Some pro's to these seats so far are that they came out of a 2 door car, so they have a lever near the top of the seat that slides them all the way forward and tilts the back forward. This is handy for back seat passengers. Also, there are a lot of notches for fore/aft adjustment and total travel is like 7" compared to the stock 3" or so.

[hifi875]

they were a pita to put in my camaro.

[Angry]

Try a 2008 -2010 Mazda 3 turbo/MPS..
I got em in mine,

[Che70velle]

I bought a nice set of seats that originally came in a Cobalt SS. These are heated leather, with the manually adjustable height control for the drivers side only. I got them for a steal, from a guy trying to put them in a 69 Camaro, who happened to be about your height. These wouldn't work for him, as he was too tall. I'm 5'10ish, so they work perfect in my Chevelle. I had to custom build all my mounting studs, but they look like they were meant to be in my car.

[fishface]

I considered the TMI Sport Seats and may have went that way if it were not for the stock frames missing the features that make modern seats nice. I think that rather than cranking out endless upholstery designs the emphasis should be on redesigning stock frames to have tilt, height adjustment, and more travel. Just saying.

[RECOVERY ROOM]

We have used a lot of the BMW seats, they are made with the same components as Recaro when you take them apart to recover

[OBeer-WAN-Kenobi]

We were able to get the seats installed this weekend. Much more comfortable than the stock seats, with one caveat. In order to get them low enough that a 6'3" person like me can sit in them comfortably without hitting the ceiling, they have to be installed off-center a bit.

The Tiburon seats are actually offset already. IIRC, they are off-center by at least an inch and a half.

Here's a picture of the brackets.


I thought I had one of the seats too, but I guess I forgot to take one. I can get one of those anytime though if anyone is interested.


Anyway, We decided to make the brackets out of 12ga steel. We were thinking about using angle iron but the 12ga "test piece" seemed more than strong enough when bent to it's shape on the brake and after the front end was bent and welded to the contour of the Tiburon seat. You can't see it very well in the picture, but the front (towards the left) hole of the bracket is on an angle. There are nuts welded to the bottom of it.

Being a bit off-center from the steering wheel is a little weird at first but I'm getting used to it. Like I said though, still way more comfortable than stock.

If you're short, you could move the seats away from the tunnel and get them closer to center. You'd need to move them about 2" further up in the air to accomplish it. You also may not be able to use the stock seat belts, which I retained in my installation.