So you're tired of driving around in 30yr old seats eh? No longer enjoy the bar running underneath the rear portion of your behind? Time for an upgrade!

A friend of mine put MR2 seats into his 510, which I bought from him and put into my 2dr. I liked the seats so much I bought another set of MR2 seats and decided to see if I could modify them myself to get them to work.

They are not "bolt-in", but if you have a welder and a grinder it is not too difficult of a swap.

Picture 1 is what we start with

First we remove the Toyota adjustment mechanism from the main rails.

What I did was used a 1/8" tap to drill the pilot holes where the attachment "rivets" were, and then used a 7/16" (probably overkill) to drill them out, and off came the adjusters.

The 510 seat rails actually unbolt for the 510 seats and picture 3 is what we have from them. To make them work on the Toyota seats, cut off the bolts that bolted the rails to the 510 seat (NOTE: Once off the seat it may get confusing as to which side is "up", if you cut off the wrong bolts to get to figure out how to reattach new ones in the same location as the old one. Don't ask how I know this...)

Now a little grinding is required so the 510 seat rail can be flush with the Toyota rail. I did this step after welding the Toyota rails so they're immobile, but doing it beforehand avoids cutting through a weld you just made

Now we get to play with the welder and weld the Toyota rails in their sliders so we don't have "double adjustment". I centered the rails in their travel, but this is  where extra tall driver can cheat and have the rails farther back before mounting the 510 pieces to them.

Now measure the distance from center to center in the 510 so we know where to mount them relative on the Toyota seats. I came up with 16 1/8" center to center

Something that came out neat is 16 1/8" on the Toyota seats comes out to the inner edge of where the upper and lower Toyota sliders meet, so we have a nice reference point

Now weld up one side of the 510 rail. You might want to tack weld it in case your first shot as alignment isn't perfect. The next picture shows how the alignment looks vs the Toyota rail

Measure the center-to-center distance and tack up the other rail, then measure again. What I did at this point was test fit the seat to see if everything lined up ok. Once you have it lined up, it's time to lay the final weld beads and put in your new seats!

This site last updated Thursday, November 19, 2009