Neon seat install

[1973dust]

As a disclaimer, I fully realize that non-original parts are not for everyone but they work for me. I've been wanting to get a seat with more support than the stock bench for a while and finally went to a local u-pull yard last Saturday to see if I could come up with something. I was able to get a pair of buckets out of a 2004 Neon SXT for $21.30 out the door. I've been searching on here for a while to get ideas on what seats to look for and what work would be involved to adapt them to an A-body and I found bits and pieces of info but not a lot of specifics. I hope that my documentation of what steps I took will be helpful to someone else considering the same type of installation. I apologize in advance as I'm not very good at placing photos where I want them on here.

 

[DionR]

 

[OttawaCharger]

Cool! I'm not even sure where my seats came from. I got a set of sliders and welded up an adaptor to make the seats fit.

 

[1973dust]

I'm fairly happy with the results but there are a couple things to make note of. Number one, the base of the seat tips back at a little more of an angle than I would prefer as I set the front outer foot on the existing bench seat hump with an 1 1/2" spacer under the front inner feet. I tried 1 1/2" tall spacers under the rear of the seats to lessen the angle but that caused them to set too high in the car. I did leave the bolts through the floor a little long as that will allow me to use thinner spacers in the rear in the future if I desire. Number two, these Neon seats lay back but they do not tilt forward any more than shown, so access to the back seat could be a problem if you have kids sitting back there. Not a problem for me and the seats do slide forward significantly if needed for access. I'm attaching a bunch more photos, most of which I think are self-explanatory, but if anyone has any questions feel free to ask. The bolts I used are all grade 8 flanged head from Menards. I'm sure I could have purchased them cheaper elsewhere but it was convenient to purchase several different lengths and return the ones not used. I removed the front mounts from the seat frames by drilling out the factory rivets so I could heat and bend them flat. The 1/4-20 button heads that I used to replace the rivets were purchased 3/4" long and I had to shorten them by an 1/8". The rivet replacements have to be very low profile to not interfere with the seat slider mechanisms. The floor reinforcements on top of the pan are 1/8" x 3 x 3 1/2" mild steel and I formed them as needed to match the floor pan contour and glued them with Loctite Power-grab Ultimate adhesive. Welding would obviously be preferred but I did not want to tear the entire interior out of the car. The front inner reinforcements under the car were 1/8" x 3" x 5" mild steel formed to the pan and the rear under-car plates were 3/16" x 2 3/4" x 2 3/4", also formed as needed. Ideally they would have been a little larger but I used what I had.

 

[1973dust]

Here are 2 more photos that wouldn't fit in the last post.

 

[1973dust]

I have no clue why the rear of the drivers side seat was able to set directly on the floor but the passenger side required a 3/4" spacer under the rear outer foot. Nothing looked obviously off on either the seats or the floor of the car but the passenger side definitely needed the spacer to sit properly.

 

[Darter6]

Did the same as you on a 64 Dart. Had to play around with mounting till they felt right while sitting.
Photo is when I was just test fitting.
Like you $50 for the pair.