Polishing my turd

Well this car has been in my family since new back in 2004. It is a package 9 with 130k miles. It received the satin paint job back in 07. Its on its 3rd set of wheels.The first set were 18" and were stolen. The second set were 17" straight fins which i have collecting dust. My little sister has been driving it for the last 4 years and she has been steadily destroying the car. They rewarded her by buying her a new CT200h so i purchased this car from them. I've been slowly fixing all the broken and missing parts. So far the thing that bugged me the most were the seats. Since the drivers seat was beat to hell with holes in it i figured i might as well chuck um.

The starting point


For the seats i came across a pair of BMW M3 electric seats for $100. I considered just making a bracket to bolt the seat to using the Prius slider mounting feet since they are just riveted on. But i wanted to keep the dual stage airbag functionality intact since i'm almost a foot taller than my fiance. So i decided to take the electric rail off the BMW seats and adapt them to the Prius' mechanical slider. The mounting points are less than 1/8th off so i just bolted them in and let the frame flex a little. I needed to trim down the brackets to accept the BMWs lower seats. All and all they work well although the aggressive side bolsters rub the arm rest more so then the stock seats.

Here is what i had to cut away.




Next was to scavenge the seat belt bracket





A fresh coat of paint until i make a bracket for the beauty cover



All bolted in. Now to clean and dye the interior.

 

I guess retrofitting BMW seats is standard maintenance based on the thread being moved. lol. Never the less this will be my thread of all the modifications i will be performing on my Prius.

Nope. I transplanted the passenger seat cushion sensor over to the BMW seat. Pretty much all airbags from BMW and Toyota come from Takata and show similar resistance across the circuit.

I was looking in to a used wheel but they are going for $120 on ebay and $150 locally. I cant justify that kind of money on a used toyota wheel. I can get M3 steering wheels for less than that. I bought a 1 year old leather steering wheel for my Fiat 500L for $65 shipped on ebay. If I have to spend that much i'm going to get a worth while upgrade. like this.