How to remove front seats?

[corrie]

Hello,

Im wanting to replace my front seats to bucket seats but don't know -

1) How to take front seats off.
2.) Where to get rails? or What will I need if I buy a bucket seat from any shop?

Need to know I guess how and what to do and what will be needed to change my seats? I see some cheap bucket seats on the net but dunno if can be fitted to my 08 RColt?

Much appreciated for your help.

[Corosith]

For a start forget about the cheap ebay seats as most of them will not be ADR approved unless you get an engineer to sign off on the seat and mounting base. Pretty sure there are some versions of the Bride, Velo, Cobra, Drift, Sparco & SAAS seats that have ADR approval but you will still need and engineer to approve the base if replacing the original rails. You can't have seats with wings to stop your head from moving about like in race/rally cars. It would be easiest to chose from the ADR approved seats and try to get them mounted to the original recaro rails or sport seat rails if you have them and get them signed off, another issue that may affect the engineering approval is the height of some of the seats in relation to your view out of the car. If you want to remove the seats from the original rails you will need a long handled allen key to get enough leverage to undo the bolts as they are extremely tight and will strip any cheapo set of allen keys (on the recaros that is, not sure about the sports seats).

That's sort of the official way of replacing the seats, otherwise pick a seat to suit (ADR approved preferably) and get the rails custom made to suit the floor bolts, some motor trimmers or say recaro dealers can make up rails but at a cost of course (I was quoted in the region of $360 for one seat base from a recaro dealer in Adelaide who specialised in custom seating). Some seat manufactuers make a whole range of sports recliners and one piece buckets like Sparco, but they may only have one or two versions that have actually been put through for ADR testing and approval. To make things easier on yourself, I'd contact the distributor and quiz them on what is available to suit and whether they can get the engineering approval done for you as they would have done it in the past, especially if they regularly manufacture and fit aftermarket seating in say buses/vans/4WD's etc.(like the Recaro mob in Adelaide do).

Here's what the RTA say about mounting aftermarket seats:
Owners should ensure that the seat and its anchorages comply with any applicable ADR requirements (possibly by
certification from the seat manufacturer or by an engineering signatory) and the appropriate seat belts are fitted to
all seating positions.
Vehicle Standards Bulletin No. 5 issued by DOTARS covers requirements for the manufacture of additional seats.

Basically your best bet although expensive is to get some original colt recaros and rails and fit them as it would be classed as a Mitsubishi option, therefore could be owner modified, the only area that you may fall foul of is if you have side impact air bags, then you'll have no choice but to stick with the standard seating as removing airbags from the equation would be illegal.

[lovecolt]

1) Most likely unmount the whole seat together with the seat rails. (Seat rails are only mounted via 4 bolts on the floor. ) From there, i woulda thought it will be pretty self doable to separate the seats with the rails.
2) If you are swapping your 08 seat for a 06 Recaro, i'm sure you can pm OddOne on how its done as he done the conversion. No seat rail changes' needed i think. And if you are after a off the shelf rail for some alternative seats, YR Advance do sell them from Japan. Alternatively, you can head towards what Corosith suggested, which is custom.

[corrie]

Thanks very much for your detailed reply Corosith and to you lovecolt as well. Much appreciated!

I think I'll just stick with my 08 sports seats for now. Cheers : )

[SLO-15T]

08 rails are integrated into the seat so no removing them
Best bet is to do either the 06 conversion
Or get your hands on some yr rails and some seats to suit as Ryan has suggested
Personally I tracked down evo 8 mr recaros (same recaros as the colt) and get some colt rails
I got lucky and managed to swap the rails I had for some colt ones