Fitting Your Ride With Sport Seats
Corbeau Racing Seats, originally uploaded by bmw328driver
People decide on getting new seats for a number of reasons. One, maybe they spilled some alcohol on their red leather (been there, done that). Two, maybe the seats are old and need replaced. Three, they just don’t like the looks of their current seats.
When either of these occurrences strike, you are given a variety of choices. You can take it to the dealer and hand over your wallet and tell them to leave whats left of your bank account on a McD’s gift card. You can have your old seats recovered by a local professional (or do it yourself), or finally you could purchase a universal sport seat.
Dealer Installed Sport Seats
While from my experiences, many dealers do in fact have a great product (if you have the funds to spare), so that is not a bad way to go. However, if you are looking to get the most for your buck, covering your existing seats can make a nice custom accent, while retaining the overall original feel and look of the interior.
Reupholstering Your Existing Seats
Many reupholster cover kits are actually not too bad for the do-it-yourselfer. You do have to make sure that you get the right kit however, as if your vehicle has side air bags, that is usually an entire different design which allows the airbags to function unrestricted. Upholstery can run anywhere from the $200’s and up depending on the year of your vehicle, the fabric, and the overall quality of the skins.
Universal Sport Seats
If you are looking for a complete change to your interior, a new set of sport seats might be more to your liking, and in many cases, it is actually a comparable price to the nicer recover kits. Sport seats come in all shapes and sizes. Some enthusiasts prefer “racing seats”, but unless you are looking to go out on a sanctioned track, sport seats are usually more than any daily driver would ever need.
Sport seats can go anywhere from around $150 a seat to well into the $1,000’s range. Recarro and Sparco are two top named brands. Many of these applications offer universal seats that will have to be fabricated in order to bolt to your interior. Some seats offer universal seats with custom brackets that can be purchased separately to make the whole job go much more smoothly.
Corbeau is probably one of the highest quality, inexpensive sport seats around. For a fixed seat (non-tilting), they have a line of Forza’s that generally cost in the range of the low $200’s. They have plenty of reclining seats that range in the $300’s on up.
While the seats themselves are a major factor of the cost of this project, the “easy install custom brackets” will add an additional $100 per seat, so don’t forget to factor that in while you are setting up your budget. Many people claim that it is quite easy to fabricate a bracket using simple tools and the existing hardware from your old seats, but one person’s “easy”, is often another person’s headache.
Side Airbag Considerations
There is another subject that goes along with installing a universal seat in your vehicle… safety. If your vehicle is fitted with airbags, your options are limited to retain these same safety devices. Recaro has a line of airbag race seats, but in general most will not.
To disconnect any safety equipment on a vehicle is generally considered illegal. This is why many dealers will sell you a seat and not be able to install it or tell you how to install it in order to bypass the system. The problem you will run into is once the electric airbag is unplugged, is that you will forever get a warning light telling you that the system is unable to locate the side airbags.
A resistor could be devised to trick the system into thinking the side airbag was still in place, although this is a dangerous project in the wrong hands, as a wrong amount of electricity sent through the system could release the airbag, causing substantial injury. For this reason, if you have side airbags it may not be to your best advantage to replace the seats.
New seats can make quite a substantial improvement in your ride, just make sure that you take all those little things into consideration, before you actually pull the trigger!
