Raising Rear of Passenger Seat
I'm too new to this forum to know how to redirect readers to a different thread on this topic, but I'll post a response here and if someone moves it over so that I can follow I'll try to keep up - - -
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Here's what happened. I noted the adjustment for the driver's side, and did a rough eyeball estimate that it moved the back of the seat bottom up and down about an inch or so, total. I also noted that the passenger seat was pretty sloped and since it had no adjustment I discussed it with the installers.
Things we discussed were that if the back were raised, the factory mounting bolts might not be long enough (which proved to be the case), and that they were probably hardened bolts. The installer also thought that the upwards tilting of the back might put some stress on the front bolts so he theorized adding a very small slanted spacer in the front.
Initially I had studied the room between the cabin roof and the passenger seatback/headrest, since the bottom of the seat wasn't being raised relative to the seatback but rather the whole seat would be raised in the rear - seatback and all. It appeared that there were easily a few inches of headroom with no adverse affects for a 1 inch rise. Someone who is really tall might reconsider that but for most people I figured it wouldn't be a problem. My wife had said when she sat in the driver's seat (which I leave permanently raised all the way in the back) if felt more comfortable. So I figured one inch would be a good matching target amount for the passenger seat. You could probably go some more if you wanted.
In the end it turned out to be really simple as they only had to do two things:
1 - Add two aluminum spacers of 1 inch with a very slight cant on them (to account for the sloping angle) at the back of the seat rails.
2 - Replace the factory bolts at the rear with 2 longer hardened bolts, which they easily obtained from a local nut/bolt specialty shop. They also selected a suitable washer for each of the new bolts. (I told them not to worry about the little plastic cap that covered the original bolts as they were out of sight anyway.)
The installer told me that when he looked at the front of the track mounts, there was a slight slant already there and thus he saw no reason to have to do anything with the front mounts.
The whole thing amounted to about a half-hour of labor, throwing some black paint on two slightly canted 1-inch aluminum spacing pieces (from square aluminum pipe or tubing - I just glanced at them and didn't ask what he used - you could probably use regular pipe for that matter), and bolting the seat rails back in with the two longer bolts in the rear.
We just downsized to a condo and I don't have a workshop any more so I just had them do it for me, but it'd really be an easy DIY job.
My wife loves it. Suddenly the whole ride was improved in her mind - especially the view since she is short. The seat is more comfortable at this angle for me, too.
Last edited by troubadour; 05-03-2012 at 01:52 PM.
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