Aftermarket seats in a Gen III

Not sure many will be interested in this but I'll post anyways in case there are people who are wondering about this.

Pretty much in a nutshell, I cannot stand the stock seats in the Prius because they (in the model III) lack thigh support for long drives and don't hold me in my seat at all. However, I'm a pretty small guy (5'10" 135lbs) so I have the problem with most factory seats. Also should mention I'm quite a "spirited" driver. I like straight lines some but my heart lies in s-bends, hairpins, and technical canyons haha. At this point, you're probably wondering why a Prius? Well its my everyday car haha and I'm working on a second car for the weekend.

:focus:

Anywho, I came across a amazing deal on some Bride Vios III Sports that I could not pass up so I snagged them up. 12hours later, I'm ripping the driver side seat out to see if I can mount them up to the stock rails using the side mount brackets. Unfortunately though, the seat belt bracket is attached to the stock seat so I need to have a custom bracket made in order for these seats to mount up. Upon further research, the passenger side seat has a 4 point weight sensor which makes for building a bracket especially expensive.

I'm going to be going to a shop that specializes in making custom brackets tomorrow morning so they can take measurements and build a bracket for my driver side. The passenger side though, from what he was telling me, will be extremely expensive to produce and could take a full day (or more) to do it and I would need to sacrifice my passenger seat to get the sensors.

So pretty much, if you want to use aftermarket seats in the Gen III Prius, you'll most likely only want to do (the more important seat anywho) the driver seat. The passenger seat bracket will get pricey really quick.

Anyways, I attached a pic of the seats I got. Call my crazy but I find full buckets more comfortable than the reclining ones or stock seats :rockon:

I'll keep this thread updated as I go through the process of building the brackets and getting the seat(s) installed. I most likely will only be doing the driver side since I don't really want to put a whole ton of money into this project. Its just a spur of the moment thing anyways haha

 

Haha totoally. But they're WAY more comfy than the stock seats. It could just be I'm used to racing buckets as opposed to passenger car seats haha

 

Not sure what you mean by neck protection. The seat is also the headrest if that's what you mean? No side airbags will be transferred over however. The seat belts will be retained with the tensioners using a FIA legal bracket which will be fabricated tomorrow.

 

Ah sorry Macmaster, I won't be able to incorporate the side airbag system without sourcing a seat that have them build in e.g: Evo X Recaros. But I will be keeping all the other safety features and I will be using a resistor so that the ECM doesn't register a fault in the system rendering the rest of the bags in the car useless.

As for seat height. I will be making the seat as low as possible to the floor but there is are computers under the seat so it will prob only be ~3" lower than the stock seat but more normal that what they are from factory.

 

I'll just be using the stock 3 point system with a seat bracket to mount the seat and seat belt to the car. It will still retain the pretentioning system and position/weight sensors. The only thing different will be the seats and lack of airbags.

Yeah 3" isn't much but its better than nothing. I will try to get more but 3" is my rough estimate of how much clearance there will be.

 

^^ Ah since that is built into the stock seat, I will not be able to really transfer that over. But FIA seats are designed to flex a certain amount in an accident so all the energy isn't transferred into the passengers.

 

Just a little update. Ran into a small issue at the shop today. Gave them a call before I was about to head up at 9am and they said that they were pretty backed up with projects that came in today. Will hopefully be able to go in on Tuesday morning and have them make me some brackets. I also spoke with the guys at Corbeau since they make a seat bracket for the Prius but they didn't specify what years/models they were compatible with. Waiting to get a call back from them but hopefully either option will pan out and I can get these buckets in haha