Did a swap today.

"Eury - AFRICA TWIN!!!!!!!" (eurylokhos)
03/19/2019 at 19:45 • Filed to: None

My 2001 4Runner has a worn out f ro nt seat. Th e leather is still in good shape, but the foam is gone, no support, hurts my back after a while. I read that people were swappi ng seats from the F30 BMWs, so my search began.

Spent time on LKQ and Car-part.com looking for a manual seat that would work. After a week or so I was rew arded with a nice manual black leather seat about 50mi away in a salvage yard . Afte r some chatting with the guy at the yard, I made my way down.

The donor.

This is a 2014 320i. Totalled, but the interior is still in great shape, it had about 30k miles on it. Price for one seat was $200, but I did some dealing with the guy and got both front seats for $250. I had only planned on swapping the driver’s side since the other is barely worn, but at that price I had to pick up both.

Some wierdo with BMW seats in the back of a Toyota.

Got them home and did some comparing. Th e BMW seats have a flat rail on the bottom that makes them easy to adapt to anything. The Toyota has seat mounts riveted onto the bottom of the rails which are also flat. Swapping became a simple matter of drilling out the rivets and grinding a smal spot weld on each bracket and using some class 8 bolts to mount them on the BMW bottoms with the appropriate spacing. The seat belt buckle was a fairly easy task as well, had to find a steel bushing at Ace hardware that made up the difference is hole diameter between the BMW and Toyota buckles.

The initial product for test fitting.

Yo u can see above what I ended up with. This is just for test fitting, if everything works well, I’ ll drop a couple of spot welds on the brackets to hold them in place in addition to the bolts . I didn’t have to drill any holes or m odify anything on the mounts or the BMW frame. It all matches up like they were meant to be.

Final product

This picture is of the driver side mounted. It all fits in nicely, however, it’s not for me. I’m tall at 6'1", and the 4Runner doesn’t have much head room as it is, and these sit about 2-3" higher. My head is essentially hitting the roof at their lowest setting, and at the highest I can drive with my head out the sunroof. It’s a shame, they are comfortable, and I like the granularity of the recline better than the stock seats that have a fairly large gap between each recline setting.

So tomorrow it’ll be back to stock. It was a fun project though, I always enjoy solving problems like this. I don’t know what I’ll do with the seats now, maybe put them on CL, maybe mount them on bases to have as a couple of cool seats for my man room.

DISCUSSION (8)

diplodicus forgot his password > Eury - AFRICA TWIN!!!!!!!
03/19/2019 at 20:24

Why not cut the mounts down so it sits lower?

Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies > Eury - AFRICA TWIN!!!!!!!
03/19/2019 at 20:39

Do you know if 2nd gens had the same seat bracket? And were there non power tan seats?

Eury - AFRICA TWIN!!!!!!! > diplodicus forgot his password
03/19/2019 at 20:57

Yo u really can’t easily. The front just sits on the rail that is part of the body, only the rear has the potential to be cut down, and you’d still be talking a cut and weld to make the mount work. To make to work for real would either take complete disassembly of the seat frame and cutting the internal structure to make it lower or just shaving the seat foam down to make an inch or 2 more. Both doable, but not something I really want to mess with. I’ll just get replacement foam for my seat and maybe add a bladder in the back that I can inflate for lumbar.

Eury - AFRICA TWIN!!!!!!! > Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies
03/19/2019 at 20:59

I don’t know. I’ve read that the 2nd and 3rd gen are very similar, so it’s possible. As for the BMW seats, they do come in tan and black. The tan was the wrong shade, and having black seats didn’t bother me, so I went with what was cheap and local.

Daily Drives a Dragon - One Last Lap > Eury - AFRICA TWIN!!!!!!!
03/19/2019 at 21:08

I have seen this swap. I kinda want to try it but my seats are clean. And also the headroom thing kills it for me.

Eury - AFRICA TWIN!!!!!!! > Daily Drives a Dragon - One Last Lap
03/19/2019 at 21:11

I’d read it takes some headroom away, but I didn’t get the impression that it’s as much as it is. I have plenty with the stock seats, these are borderline unusable. I’d say 5’10” or so and under they’d be great.

Daily Drives a Dragon - One Last Lap > Eury - AFRICA TWIN!!!!!!!
03/19/2019 at 21:54

The headroom is better without a sunroof (why I have an SR5 and not a limited) but I still wouldn't fit

MonkeePuzzle > Eury - AFRICA TWIN!!!!!!!
03/20/2019 at 09:13

real shame it didnt work out, they do look like a great improvement.