Junkyard Leather Seats That Will Fit in a 69 Camaro

[OBeer-WAN-Kenobi]

Hi all,

What junkyard vehicles should I be on the lookout for that have nice leather buckets which will fit in my Camaro? I guess height is probably the biggest issue. Besides that, I'll be able to fab a bracket or adapter to make them work. I'm 6'3" and have already made an adapter to set my stock seats 3" back. With the stock seats and that adapter (about 3/8" thick) I still have a couple of inches to spare between my head and the ceiling.

I don't have the cash to pay for some aftermarket seats so if anyone has some good ideas about what vehicle to nab some out of, that would be great! Me and my rear end will thank you!

[130fe]

93-02 F-Body. I have the firebird ones in my car. Very comfortable with power lumbar. The front holes line up and just have the make brackets to space the rears.

[GregWeld]

Can't help you find seats -- But I will say that stock '69 Camaro seats are some of the nastiest sitting seats in the Universe... so it won't take much to have that be an upgrade! LOL

[OBeer-WAN-Kenobi]

Can't help you find seats -- But I will say that stock '69 Camaro seats are some of the nastiest sitting seats in the Universe... so it won't take much to have that be an upgrade! LOL

I know right? When I first sit down, it hurts my tailbone and then i feel like the seat is convex and my bottom wants to roll right off of it.

That being said, I've ridden in my friends 2002 firebird formula and although the drivers seat may be ok, the passenger arrangement was EXTREMELY uncomfortable. It was too low (in that car) and I didn't have any room for my toes. The bolster also made my HK USPc dig into my ribs. I think I'd have to go and sit in a drivers seat on one of these to test it out.

[Ron in SoCal]

O'Beer...the obvious choice is some Corvette seats which many have fitted into first gens. With your height they'll need to be mounted real low. Also, if you can find them I believe certain Mistubihi Evo models used Recaro Sport seats. Very comfortable for cruising, and they get snatched up real quick.

[TCRugger]

Look for some 04-06 GTO seats. Some of the most comfortable seats around. I have them in my 67 Nova, so you might have to fab some brackets for your car.

[Angry]

I fitted a pair of buckets from a 2008 Mazda 3 Turbo/MPS.
They take a bit of work to to remove the original mounts but easy to make an adaptor to fit to the original Comaro bolt holes.

[Vince@Meanstreets]

Take a look at the Hyundai Tiburon seats. sits low and feels good.

[Craig67]

Love my Recaro's out of the early 90's BMW's.

[XLexusTech]

Take a look at the Hyundai Tiburon seats. sits low and feels good.

Which years have you fitted? Checked eBay and the look pretty appealing

[OBeer-WAN-Kenobi]

Thanks for the suggestions so far guys. I'm going to start looking imminently as I drove it for the first time last night (for any real distance anyway) and the seats feel like they want to throw you out instead of keep you in. The stock seats are HORRIBLE, more horrible than I imagined.

[crazycarguy22]

Take a look at the Hyundai Tiburon seats. sits low and feels good.

I second this, have them in my Chevelle. Look for 04-08 seats.

[OBeer-WAN-Kenobi]

I second this, have them in my Chevelle. Look for 04-08 seats.

I think anything after 04 doesn't have leather. At least leather isn't an option on car-part.com when I choose an 08. Could be that it's just missing that option on Car-part but they were actually produced with them. I don't know.

[crazycarguy22]

I bought 04 seats for mine and they are all leather. However, I have an 05 Tiburon and it has a leather cloth combo. I'm not sure if I can link it here and if not sorry but try a website called new newtiburon and just make a post asking for seats. Good luck.

[OBeer-WAN-Kenobi]

I bought 04 seats for mine and they are all leather. However, I have an 05 Tiburon and it has a leather cloth combo. I'm not sure if I can link it here and if not sorry but try a website called new newtiburon and just make a post asking for seats. Good luck.

Thanks, I may give that a try. They look like nice seats and although I had a couple of leads on some, those fell through.

[OBeer-WAN-Kenobi]

Still looking. Had a set of Tiburon seats sold out from under me the other day.

I have a co-worker that has a 2012 Mitsubishi EVO and I'd heard that the Recaros from them can be a pretty good deal and fit the same brackets as the Recaro "sport" model seats.... How the hell to people fit into those things!? A jockey maybe, but anyone else?

I tried to sit in the Recaros and the bottom part of the seat dug into my hip bones so bad I thought I was going to bruise.

I'm sure glad my co-worker had them so I could test them out.

[fishface]

I have kicked around lots of seats. Finally came to the conclusion to buy the Recaro Specialist. It is costly but I can sell my stockers to recupe some of cost and imo is one of the few after market options that look like they belong in there.

[OBeer-WAN-Kenobi]

I have kicked around lots of seats. Finally came to the conclusion to buy the Recaro Specialist. It is costly but I can sell my stockers to recupe some of cost and imo is one of the few after market options that look like they belong in there.

Yeah, unfortunately that's just not in my budget.

Sometimes it's amazing to me how much money people throw at these cars. Sure, I'd love to buy all new stuff and just assemble it. No greasy junk, stuck bolts, torches and skinned knuckles but if I want one of these cars at all, I have to be frugal. That and the fact that getting junkyard/non oem parts to work has always been part of hot rodding and is part of the fun in and of itself.

Speaking of which. I found some seats out of an '03 Tiburon in a local salvage yard. I checked them out last night and there aren't any rips or tears. I'll have to do a bit of leather reconditioning as the passenger seat was open to the elements for a while.....but the price was right. $100 for the set.

I'll be hitting you up via PM Vince, to see what you did for modifications.

[hifi875]

i had the tiburon seats in my camaro prior to the ones i have now(4th gen firebird). they were great seats, alot better than my current ones. i have them in my notch mustang now.

[fishface]

I would like to see some pics when you get them installed Obeer. That is one seat I haven't looked at. When I was looking all I found was seats that had bolsters broken down, rips etc. So I got discouraged. I sat in a set in a Saturn Ion that were uncomfortable, to me at least.

[OBeer-WAN-Kenobi]

I would like to see some pics when you get them installed Obeer. That is one seat I haven't looked at. When I was looking all I found was seats that had bolsters broken down, rips etc. So I got discouraged. I sat in a set in a Saturn Ion that were uncomfortable, to me at least.
No problem. I was hoping to do it this weekend but I had other stuff to do.

I did have time to clean up the seats though. They were really dirty when I got them and frankly, looked like hell. But I thought they'd clean up nice and I was right. They look really good, especially for $100.

[OBeer-WAN-Kenobi]

My uncle and I took the passenger seat out and started trying to fit the Tiburon seats last night.

Where your butt sits, the seats are about the same width as the stock Camaro seats and about the same height so that's really good; unfortunately, the track width is around 5" wider and the length between the holes is about 2.5" longer IIRC. Among other things, this will cause the seat bottom to be a bit higher off the floor than stock. This may be a problem for me.

I think we will get them to work, but it's not an easy install if you want to use the stock hole locations in the floor. That's what I'd like to do. So we are going to need to fab up some fairly intricate adapter brackets. The biggest challenge will be keeping the seats low enough that I can still get under the steering wheel and not hit my head on the ceiling.

We're going to make a temporary bracket out of 16ga to adjust and place where we want and then make the final one out of "real" metal once we've figured everything out.

Some pro's to these seats so far are that they came out of a 2 door car, so they have a lever near the top of the seat that slides them all the way forward and tilts the back forward. This is handy for back seat passengers. Also, there are a lot of notches for fore/aft adjustment and total travel is like 7" compared to the stock 3" or so.

[hifi875]

they were a pita to put in my camaro.

[Angry]

Try a 2008 -2010 Mazda 3 turbo/MPS..
I got em in mine,

[Che70velle]

I bought a nice set of seats that originally came in a Cobalt SS. These are heated leather, with the manually adjustable height control for the drivers side only. I got them for a steal, from a guy trying to put them in a 69 Camaro, who happened to be about your height. These wouldn't work for him, as he was too tall. I'm 5'10ish, so they work perfect in my Chevelle. I had to custom build all my mounting studs, but they look like they were meant to be in my car.

[fishface]

I considered the TMI Sport Seats and may have went that way if it were not for the stock frames missing the features that make modern seats nice. I think that rather than cranking out endless upholstery designs the emphasis should be on redesigning stock frames to have tilt, height adjustment, and more travel. Just saying.

[RECOVERY ROOM]

We have used a lot of the BMW seats, they are made with the same components as Recaro when you take them apart to recover

[OBeer-WAN-Kenobi]

We were able to get the seats installed this weekend. Much more comfortable than the stock seats, with one caveat. In order to get them low enough that a 6'3" person like me can sit in them comfortably without hitting the ceiling, they have to be installed off-center a bit.

The Tiburon seats are actually offset already. IIRC, they are off-center by at least an inch and a half.

Here's a picture of the brackets.
49205

I thought I had one of the seats too, but I guess I forgot to take one. I can get one of those anytime though if anyone is interested.


Anyway, We decided to make the brackets out of 12ga steel. We were thinking about using angle iron but the 12ga "test piece" seemed more than strong enough when bent to it's shape on the brake and after the front end was bent and welded to the contour of the Tiburon seat. You can't see it very well in the picture, but the front (towards the left) hole of the bracket is on an angle. There are nuts welded to the bottom of it.

Being a bit off-center from the steering wheel is a little weird at first but I'm getting used to it. Like I said though, still way more comfortable than stock.

If you're short, you could move the seats away from the tunnel and get them closer to center. You'd need to move them about 2" further up in the air to accomplish it. You also may not be able to use the stock seat belts, which I retained in my installation.