Gareth's Robinhood 2B Site

Changing the Seats

I had a few months with the Recaro seats in the car, and they are great, perfectly usable seats - I left the sliders on but removed the height adjustments. For me they had two problems. The first was that both Helen and I are quite tall, and our heads would be mostly above the windscreen. This meant that the windscreen frame obscured our vision when driving (not great). Secondly, the seats were black velour and seemed to pick up every bit of dust/swarf around so they always seemed to look messy.

Anyway, I was wandering around eBay one day and found a set of black leather seats from a Cavalier that were worn but in good condition. I bid on them and won them for £50. When I got a chance to see them, there was a small amount of wear on the driver's seat from the seatbelt but otherwise they were in very good condition. They were also slightly narrower than the Recaros, and were much easier to fit.

The fitting procedure wasn't very different from fitting the orginal seats, apart from being slightly easier. I fabricated fixed runners from some angled steel - my seats are not connected to the seatbelts and so do not need to be fitted to take any forces (or so my SVA tester said - and I for one believe him).