Outer Limits 4x4 Board

After I bought my '94 Hilux LN106 Dual cab a year ago the first mod I ended up doing was a seat swap.
The leaf front end handles like a boat on road and the stock seats, which were probably crap when new, were completely worn out and useless. There was no lateral support to speak of, other than holding yourself in the seat using the steering wheel, while cornering at speed.

After a bit of research I found out that surf seats would bolt straight in and the next closest seats were Honda Prelude or Integra.
I didn't really think the surf seats looked that much better than the Hilux ones and I knew Honda seats were quite comfortable so I started looking for them.

The seats I installed are not engineered. I would expect that they could be as I have used the stock floor mount points and bolts. I think the only part that would need approval would be the parts I modified. That is: the rear mounts previously spot welded to the rails are now bolted with high tensile bolts to the rails - I also used washers and locktite.

A Gumtree search later and I had the seats below for $200.



You can see the difference between the two seat rails - Hilux left Honda right



The Honda seats bolt straight up to the stock Hilux front mount points




The Honda rear mounts are left in mid air when the front is bolted up



My solution was to transplant the Hilux rear mounts from the Hilux rails to the Honda rails
Remove the Honda rear mounts. I ground off the head of the spot weld /rivet with a grinder





To remove the Hilux rear mounts I alos ground the heads off the welds. The only difference was that because I wanted to reuse these mounts I needed to also pop the rest of the spot weld / rivet. I used a vice and a socket to pop it out.




You can see how the Hilux mount will line up with the Honda Rail. Not all of them lined up dead straight like this but they were all very close.




Rear bolted and mounted




The end result is a set of comfortable seats with great lateral support. These seats also had drivers side hight adjustment.
One slight problem I encountered with this method was that the bolts used to mount the rear inside mount on the drivers side seat fouled the seat from sliding back as far as it normally would. The seat roller stops at the bolt.
If you need the seat to go back that far (like me) then you can replace the Hilux mount with 45mm square section steel. It's only the driver side inside mount that I had this issue with.

great write up. What year model prelude or integra seats.

cheers

or you maybe to use flat head bolt that might fix it

Any reason why you didnt just weld the hilux bits instead of bolting them there?

The seats are out of the 97-01 model Prelude which is apparently the 5th gen Prelude.
You can see the body shape and the seats in the sales brochure at this site:
http://www.preludeonline.com/f60/1997-2 ... cs-241814/

I don't have a welder hence the use of bolts. Also I have read that for engineering the bolts would be easier to pass - no idea if this is true. I guess bolts are a know quantity where welds can be shit (like mine would probably be).

This is a good right up mate.
Ive recently been searching info on how to bolt non-hilux seats into a hilux.
I have some nice bucket seats out of a Nissan NXCoupe, that I want to put into my Lux, and this will help me out.

Thanks mate.

And Ive heard that engineers love bolt in bits more than welded in bits.

I recently put autotechnica bucket seat in my hilux using the standard hilux rails and an adaptor made up from 5mm plate steel. When i got it engineered he said with bolts as they are graded its possible to tell how strong its going to be, with welding its harder to tell how strong it is going to be.

Looking at doing similar with integra or prelude(whichever i find) and wondering if you could use a steel block and longer hi tensile bolts instead of grinding the mounts etc.

dave

I suppose you could use square section steel instead of bolting the Hilux mounts on. You'd still need to cut off the Honda mounts but the Hilux seats would remain in tact. I did that for one of the drivers seat mounts as bolting the Hilux mount on would have stopped the seat going back far enough on the rail.

Nissan Tarrano ones fit pretty good to. Drivers has lumber support.

Was also wondering if anyone knows the engineering cost (nsw) for fitting seats.

Dave