Raising the drivers seat.

l would like to raise the drivers seat a little, as l am quite small.
On the Defender you can buy a seat riser kit which raises the seat around 3cm at the back and 2cm at the front. This makes more difference than you might think.

l assume this isn't available for the Jimny. l wonder if it would be acceptable to fit spacers under the seat rails to raise the seat (say) 2cm at the rear and 1cm at the front.

I have raised the seat on my gen.4 by 20 mm at the front with no problems. I suggest aluminium for the spacers with a min.width of 20-25 mm and bolts to suit. You need to duplicate the type of bolt as mine were mushroom headed to spread the load.

Roger

If you're tall wouldn't moving the seat further back make more sense than lifting it and reducing the head room. Dave x8ggy of this parish does or did rails than move the seats back but only up a little.

Hi there

l am small, not tall !

Then I would suggest something in a steel box section and a note to the insurance. Seat mounts are an integral component of the impact mitigation system.

The seat will still be mounted to the floor so the integrity of the impact mitigation system ie. seat belt will still be viable.

Roger

I raised the front edge of my seat (to provide more support under my thighs, as I've got quite long legs) by sticking a stack of washers on both bolts under each rail. Still plenty of meat left on the bolt to go into the captive nut. If you wanted to lift it by a lot, then look to buy some longer high-tensile steel bolts to be safe.

Thank you for the replies. A 30mm lift on the Land Rover was sufficient so l would imagine 20mm will be fine in the Jimny.
l may initially try 10mm at the rear and nothing at the front.

Just using longer bolts with isolated spacers is putting too much faith in the moment resistance of the bolts. A much safer solution is a subframe of the appropriate height linking the bolt positions front to back and side to side.

Lambert, he is not building the Eiffel Tower, he is raising the front of his seat by 10mm, in old money thats less than 1/2", and using an aluminium spacer of 20-25mm dia. with a mushroom headed bolt to spread the load on the seat runner will be more than adequate for the job.

Roger

No not the Blackpool Tower but still a safety critical system of the car that we all sit on and trust to protect us, not something that should be bodged and certainly something that will attract the attention of an insurance loss adjustor. My insurance were adamant in requesting that my recaros be inspected by an independent recognised engineer. They are correctly installed and bolt to the factory location and the insurance were still twitching. It's why we have type approval etc.

I fitted Recaro seats in my Land-Cruiser and the insurance company were happy to accept my statement that they were correctly fitted. Maybe my unblemished record with them had something to do with it.
Anyway, thats all water under the bridge and I have things to do. You take a discussion and convert into an argument and that doesn't interest me, so once again I will bow out and leave you to ponder the difference between small and tall and Eiffel and Blackpool.

Roger