Recaros

[projordio]

Hi guys, recently picked up some cavalier mk2 gte recaros for my caravelle. Unfortunately the previous owners welded some mk2 fiesta seats onto the seat rail so I was wondering has anyone else fitted these recaro lx style seats and how have you done so? thanks

[davidoft1]

Have you got a picture of the underside of the seats and the seat runners in the van?

[projordio]

No I don't however I can take some tomorrow. The rails on the fiesta seats are no use, I fully intend to scrap them if nobody want them by next week, haha. The recaros have what I assume original recaro adapter rails what bolted onto the original Vauxhall rails with 4 vertical stand-offs with three holes for height adjustment.

[Aidan]

There were commercially available TUV approved adapters available from Germany back in the day that fit to flat bottomed Recaros and slide into our seat runners (They obviously were able to obtain the VW male runners from the original seat manufacturer up until 2002), I have a set in my pickup which I got when I imported Edna from Germany, she had some old Ford flat bottomed Recaros fitted with these adapters. When I took Edna off the road I replaced the seats with better condition newer Recaros from a Rally edition Japanese based (Toyota ?) Korean made (Kia ?) car from the turn of the century and fitted these in the pickup.
They pick up on 4 of the six captive nuts (M6)in the frame of the Recaros - if you want to copy them then Fabzzz has the information as he measured them and I think he put the info into the design software he uses for his engineering work. Fabzzz is now in France, though will be doing a flying visit to the UK, hopefully soon, or if you are visiting Wales you could take a look at them here.

[cobblers]

If your recaros have the same frame as Rover ones, they actually fit a T25 fairly well - you can fit them nice and low. Remove all the OE runners and sliders from them, then you need to weld a bar across the base of the frame at the back with some captive nuts on the back, (I used caravelle middle seat runner bar!) and some tabs on the front, then you can bolt t25 seat runners on.

Here's some pictures from when I did this about 15 years ago. My work was a bit rough. I was skint.













The rod for the VW slider adjuster thing doesn't fit back in without fettling. I never quite got it right, and just put a bolt through where the bar would be to lock the seat in place.

They were incredibly comfortable, the driving position wasn't compromised (like it is in 99.99999% of these vans with non OE seats).
I'd fit another pair in a heartbeat.

[TwinTurbo]

Looks better fitting than the Saab 9-3 ones in mine. They are too high so there's almost no gap between legs and wheel.