Subaru Impreza seats INSTALLED my write up!

The seats are out of a bugeye newage Subaru Impreza, with the original runners, I also purchased the rear seats so I can use the material to cover the rear jimny seats, but that’s a job Im going to leave to the trimmers.

I may have gone overboard with the pictures plus my engineering is not at a great standard, but this is my first time at fitting seats from one car to another.

First job is to remove the orginal Jimny seats, no airbag stuff to worry about so I just got on with it.
You remove the plastic shields over the bolt holes by putting a large bladed screwdriver between the cover and the seat rail, then push the screwdriver towards your seat inturn pushing the plastic cover outwards away from the seat rails. Do this on all 4, remove the bolts and the seat pops out.







Placing the Scooby seats in the car, you will instantly notice that the side closest to the door is miles away from the floor of the truck, so we will have to compensate for this later.




The seat rails on the transfer box tunnel side need the mounting plates trimming off to fit. But other than that there will be good to go once the Jimny mounting ‘feat’ are on.



I wanted to use the original mountings from the Jimny seat rails to give it a standard fitment look as possible. Removing these original plates from the seat rails is a time consuming job, they are partly welded on some of the sides, spot welded and riveted on!!! These were definitely not designed to be removed.

Here is a picture of the Jimny seat on the left, Scoob seat on the right.



I cut the standard rails into 4 pieces so I could put each plate in the vice, you will need to grind the welds where visible, grind the heads off the rivets and hammer them out using a punch or similar and also drilling out the spot welds with a 7/8mm drill bit. I would advise centre punching the hole first and using a pilot drill.

I’ll show you the Scoob first, this one in particular is a real pain in the ass, as its been spot welded and has a long rectangular weld which is difficult to get to with the angle grinder.



Rivets ground off….



The weld to be ground off..



When you see these punched circles in the steel, it means a spot weld or similar needs a good drilling



All off…



Cleaned up for when she needs welding…



Once you have spent (a very long time) getting all this done, you then have to remove the Jimny ones , hacksaw time!!




Remove all the plates carefully so they are intact, also when drilling the spot welds, drill all the way through as they will hopefully provide you with a mounting hole for later.



When all the jimny plates had been removed I bolted them back into the Jimny so I could offer the prepped Scoob seat.



Offered the seat up to see how much metal I needed to get it level, I used no special method to line the seat up, I eyed it up across the seats and also looked directly through the windshield to see if the seat looked straight in the window when compared to the roof and any other reference points I could think off! Lol



At this point I had a good fiddle about with the seat rails in the fully back position and fully forward. I will still be using the rear seats so needed to make sure that people can still get in the back with the seat reclined forward and at the end of its runners. I discovered that on the inner side of the seat to the rear, I could put a bolt through the runner into the Jimny plate to get the ball rolling .




The front mounting plate also magically lined up!! So I stuck a bolt in both of them to test fit it all again to make sure my eyes were not playing tricks on me!



And yet another test fit! This time the spirit level came in handy to jack the seat up to a suitable height.




Now one side was mocked up, I went out the next day and bought (from B&Q of all places!) Some rectangle steel (they don’t call it box section?) Can't remember the size off hand so bare with me and i'll update this later.


Another problem I found was that the Scoob seat is wider on its rails so I also needed to extend the Jimny mounting plate to weld the new steel too.
So I made a plate that would cover the gap needed, large enough so it could be bent in the vice to give it some strength.





So now when mocked up the steel now has something to be welded to. You will also notice I trimmed down the original Scoob bracket which will needed some additional fine tuning later.



The rear sits a little skewed and needed some persuasion with a big ‘trusty adjusty’ (12” adjustable spanner )



I also found out later on that I needed to get the angle grinder out and file some flats on the rear plate to level it all off nice to give me something better to weld to.



Next I welded the steel runner spacer (?) together.



Now my life would have been a lot easier if I had nice MIG, instead my TIG in the garage is outside the reach of the truck so I spent loads of time marking where things went, removing the seat, tacking, putting the seat back in and checking, removing the seat and welding. If you have a MIG sat by the truck this will go by loads quicker (I will be buying a MIG very soon!)
So less writing and more photos!









WARNING!!! On some of the welds try not to penetrate the other side!! Sounds stupid and against what you are trying to achieve with a good weld, but the runners have bearings in them and have to be on super smooth steel inside or they will not move! I found out the hard way and spent 30mins with a hand file trying to smooth the weld down inside and that’s after stripping the runner and swearing when I bent the bearing carrier trying to get it back in!! be warned!!



Note my attempt at redoing the spot weld!






You will also need to remove the original Jimny seat belt fastener on the old seat and replace the Scoob one. Bolt the seat in and hey presto! Now you just need to do the other side lol. I will spray the new metal with some primer and black paint, but for now sod it Im leaving them until it gets a little warmer!

i like that, they fit in there well, nice and narrow. got me thinking, that write up would be handy

Will try and put something together just need some steel to finish, so hope to have it done by end of the week.

were they just a lucky guess or did you know they would fit that well ?

her indoors keeps banging on about some buckets to stop her getting bounced around the cab lol

Eh up reaper!, it was on this very forum about the scoob seats being a good swap then bizarrely a close friend broke his scoob up!

They certainly brighten the cabin no end and feel pretty snug. I've also got some harnesses going in but also keeping the seat belts. Your lass will have to have a go in it and see what she thinks when it's done

poped round for a sneeky look and gota say you made a great job of fitting them dude

and carnt wait to see the rest of the plan for the other seats

Both fitted now, got loads of photos just need to write it up, for either advice or critique

There may have been a far simpler way of doing it, but I've managed to keep everything as standards so all jimny mounting hardware on Scooby runners. So now have height adjustment on drivers side lol

im likeing them new seats mate

That write up would be really useful for me too. Ive been thinking about how to do seat mod for a while now.

Write up done! (see first post) let the (constructive) criticism begin!

Excellent!

great write up Sponnie, seats look good and you can never have too many pics
now you just need a full harness and a gum shield for the missus and she'll be sorted