EVO Recaros in the SVX

[sperry]

As posted on the SVX forums: http://www.subaru-svx.net/forum/showthread.php?t=51963 I think most the people here are a little more technically savvy than the folks over at the SVX network, so excuse the simplified and SVX specific details.

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A few weeks back I picked up some Recaro's out of an EVO VIII. After my plans with a friend of a friend fell through for getting some custom brackets fabbed up, I bought a MIG welder and went to work on the brackets myself.

Since pretty much all aftermarket seats can be bottom mounted the same as the Recaros out of the EVO, I figure I'd share my design with everyone. Of course, each car tends to be a little different when it comes to fabrication jobs, so if you choose to follow my instructions, just use them as basic guidelines. Plus, seats are a safety device in a car... so make sure you're confident with your welding/fabrication skills. If you're not, get help!

The first step is building a ladder frame. This will attach to the slider rails. Each frame is made up of four 18 inch long pieces of flat bar. I used 1/8" x 2" hot rolled flat bar, which is the same stock used in the brackets that came with my RaceTech seats in my WRX, so I figure it'll be strong enough as long as my welding is decent.

Here's the ladder frame with the basic dimensions called out:



This worked for the EVO seats because their rails are 16" on center, placing the mounting holes for the seats right down the middle of the rails.

The next step is building the front brackets. To do this, I used a home-made brake built out of a heavy duty gate hinge welded onto some 2" angle and jammed into my truck's trailer hitch. It allows me to do some simple bends, up to 90 deg, with a 1/2" or so radius. With the brake, I bent up a pair of front brackets:





The two brackets will bolt into the stock front location while providing the angle and clearance to put the ladder frame off the carpet with room for the bolts that connect the frame to the seat. They're approximately 2" long on the short side by 3.5" long on the long side, with an angle around 120 deg (I never measured the angle, just bent a test piece until it fit the way I wanted, and copied it w/ the brake).

The next piece to bend up is the bracket that attaches from the rear of the frame to the transmission tunnel. I don't have a picture of the part in progress, but here's what it looks like when it's installed:



This is a little tricky, because the bend is not perpendicular to the length of the bar, nor is the bar welded perpendicularly to the frame. There's around a 5deg angle to both the bend and the weld. To get it right, I made my bend on a long piece of bar, then fit it under the frame and marked it for trimming.

To assemble the bracket, I dry fit the whole thing in the car, then used a sharpie to mark all the bracket locations. It doesn't have to be perfect because imperfections in the bracket can be masked later when the mounting holes are drilled. Then I tacked everything together for test fitting before finally welding the whole thing up.

Here's the (passenger side) bracket all welded up:



That picture was after I drilled the 4 holes. To drill the holes, after welding up the bracket, I placed it in the car, and marked the location of all the mounting holes. Then drilled everything w/ a uni-bit. The front brackets each get a hole that goes into the floor, the tranny tunnel bracket gets a hole, and the final hole goes straight through the ladder frame into the floor. I did not drill a hole for the floor bolt on next to the tranny tunnel. My WRX brackets don't use this hole, so I figure the SVX is similar enough to get away without it as well. I could have put the hole there, but it would have been a minor pain in the ass, as the hole would have to go right through a weld.

The final step is marking the bracket for the seat holes, drilling, and mounting the bracket to the bottom of the seat, here's the driver's side seat:



Now here's where we get to the down-side of these brackets.

First, it's a tight fit for wrenches when installing the seats. Once the brackets are attached to the seats, it's tough to get a socket on the front brackets to bolt them in. If you used big hardware to attach the seat to the frame, you may have to install the front bolts after the frame is attached to the car.

Second, in an effort to get the seats as absolutely low as possible (I'm 6'4" and the primary reason for swapping the seats to begin with was to get some head room) I designed my brackets to hug the floor as much as possible. The side effect of this is that the rear bolt that attaches to the floor is partially in line with the seat's sliders when the seat slides back. Now, a simple spacer, or some clever bending of the longitudinal frame bars would lift the sliders out of line with that rear bolt, but that would raise the rear of the seat up. So I just ground down the head of my bolts for clearance. Not exactly the professional way of solving things, but it works best for keeping my butt as low as possible.

This is the bolt I had to grind:



Finally, another drawback to the "as low as possible" design; the front of the bracket is higher than the rear. So when you pull on that adjustment handle, gravity tends to send the seat backwards if you're not ready. So, don't pull on that handle with people in the back seat... you might surprise them!

Anyway, here are the seats installed in the car:







The black/blue color is borderline hideous in a tan & red car. It probably wouldn't be so bad in a gray car. I'm planning on getting the seats reupholstered once I'm satisfied that I'm more comfortable in these that I was in the stock leather seats. When the seats come out for that, I'll clean up and paint or powder-coat the brackets.

You may have noticed the steering wheel and dash. To "match" the new seats, I painted the "wood" a semi-gloss black and installed my '02 WRX steering wheel in the car. I'll probably go back and paint it again and use flat black, as it would match the existing black plastic that's in the car a little better. But either way, it's an improvement over the fake wood.

More pictures of the build are here: http://www.seccs.org/gallery/index.p...VX/EVO%20seats

[sperry]

So Cory... you got a friend that does upholstery, right? Is he interested in making a few hundred bucks?

[MPREZIV]

I'll check with him! He's off today, but he'll be here tomorrow.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by MPREZIV

I'll check with him! He's off today, but he'll be here tomorrow.

Sweet!

I've got two ideas:

- Replace the blue of the Recaros with the same color ultrasuede as the car already has on the dash, plus reupholster the rear seats in black & beige to match.

- Reupholster the front seats in leather to match the rear.

I'm just afraid going with real leather is going to be too expensive in materials. Then again, that ultrasuede/alcantera/ecsaine isn't super cheap either.

[Nick Koan]

I kinda dig the black and tan for all around, but would that really be cheaper than the leather and labor for only the front seats?

[sperry]

Originally Posted by Nick Koan

I kinda dig the black and tan for all around, but would that really be cheaper than the leather and labor for only the front seats?

Well, if I don't reupholster the rear seats, I will have to have a small tear repaired on one of the rear seats. So there will need to be some work done back there regardless.

However, I think if I were to scrounge up some cloth rear seats and reupholster them, I may be able to make some money back by selling the full set of beige front and rear seats as-is.

But the more I think about it, the more I think I want the car to be as OEM as possible, meaning I'd probably prefer the Recaros be done in leather. I just don't want to spend $1000 on it... that's just way too much for what the car's worth.

[100_Percent_Juice]

Not to shabby. You said the back hangs down low. Would it be low enough to want to go back and raise the rear brackets?

[sperry]

Originally Posted by 100_Percent_Juice

Not to shabby. You said the back hangs down low. Would it be low enough to want to go back and raise the rear brackets?

Naw. I actually started building the bracket w/ a level slider at first. But it was far more complicated to make it fit (needed some odd spacers or a some bends to the frame that my brake couldn't handle).

Plus, as-is, I'm barely lower than the stock seats simply due to the Recaros being so much firmer that I don't sink into them like I did w/ the stock seats. So if they were level, they'd be too high.

[cody]

I love the makeshift break. Nice work.

[sybir]

Awesome, man.

[100_Percent_Juice]

I don't get to post this often. However, I feel this thread is deserving.

[khail19]

Nice job Scott.

Reminds me of the time my friend and I were welding up seat brackets for my old Isuzu Impulse. Had to do some of the welding after mounting the brackets to the seats. Both of us had masks on so we couldn't see at all. Then we smelled something nasty, flipped up the masks and realized the vinyl and foam had started melting and burning. I would have been pissed if they had been Recaros, but luckily they were cheap Jamex seats and the repair we did looked decent.