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Seat Bottom Adjustment

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Main Forum' started by MadHungarian, Jun 6, 2005.

  1. MadHungarian

    MadHungarian Member

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    I would like to raise the height of the front of the bottom seat cushion (i.e., under my legs/knees). It appears that the only way to easily do this is to undo the bolts at the leading edge of the seat rails, place some washers between the rails and the floor mounts, and rebolt. Any other suggestions (or critiques/warnings)? Thanks in advance.
     
    #1 MadHungarian, Jun 6, 2005
  2. randalla

    randalla Member

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    you might want to consider adding a chair cushion to sit on to raise the height of the seat. Messing with the way the seat is installed might cause more problems than you would think, particularly if your car has side airbags.
     
    #2 randalla, Jun 6, 2005
  3. MadHungarian

    MadHungarian Member

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    Randalla: Thanks for the quick reply. I apparently did not make my goal clear. I do not want to raise the seats (I'm 6'3"). I just want to raise the fronts of both front seats so that my legs have some support on long trips, and so my woman friend will stop saying "I don't like it-- I feel like I'm sliding off the seat and onto the floor."
     
    #3 MadHungarian, Jun 6, 2005
  4. oly_57mpg

    oly_57mpg New Member

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    Uh... You let your "woman friend" drive your car... And you want this to happen because???
     
    #4 oly_57mpg, Jun 6, 2005
  5. MadHungarian

    MadHungarian Member

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    Not as much as I should--she usually does beat more than half the men in the field when she goes go-cart racing. And I would like her to be comfortable, even when she is in the passenger seat.

    I guess I could roll up a couple of old beach towels, keep them under the seat, and fish them out when my legs ache or she has trouble with the slideing feeling. But that's the inelegant solution, the kind I used years ago when I was a poor student driving old beaters.

    After all, this is a brand new $25,000-plus car; one would hope something a bit more elegant is possible. And shame on you, Toyota, for ignoring tilt adjustment!
     
    #5 MadHungarian, Jun 6, 2005
  6. oly_57mpg

    oly_57mpg New Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MadHungarian\";p=\"96100)</div>
    WOW! I'm impressed.

    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MadHungarian\";p=\"96100)</div>
    Back to your washer idea... That should work with out too much trouble. Hopefully, you would only need to move the front of the seat vertically by an inch or so. This shouldn't cause any problems with the safety features; except you would have to replace the bolt with a longer bolt with the same (or higher) hardness.

    Washers are OK, but they tend to look a little odd when you stack a whole bunch of them. There are metal sleaves, or spacers, that you could make out of piping and get that would move the seat up to the height you/female friend requires.

    In fact, a suspension bushing would probably be the best. It would offer the right size hole and surface area.
     
    #6 oly_57mpg, Jun 6, 2005
  7. MadHungarian

    MadHungarian Member

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    The continuing saga (aka "Nothing is Easy Anymore")

    I should learn to not propose solutions untill looking closely at the problem. It its wisdom, Toyota designed the seat mount to prevent use of a spacer between rail and floor (the bolt is angled, so when mount is raised the bolt does not align with floor bolt hole.

    So, I guess the next course of action is to remove the seat, drill out the rivet attaching the rail to the mount, put the spacer there, and then use a bolt rather than a rivet to put it back together. How difficult cound THAT be?

    And thanks to oly for your suggestions,

    Its seems to be either that or the beach towels. Darn!
     
    #7 MadHungarian, Jun 7, 2005
  8. bruceha_2000

    bruceha_2000 Senior Member

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    I think Dr. Fusco found a sort of lumbar support cushion that he uses on the seat bottom with the lumbar bulge forward to increase thigh support. Maybe something similar would work for you.
     
    #8 bruceha_2000, Jun 7, 2005
  9. DaveinOlyWA

    DaveinOlyWA 3rd Time was Solariffic!!

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    i bought one of those pads that is very thin about ½" on the back and maybe an inch on the thighs. it makes a huge difference on long trips.

    you might want to look on line because someone posted a link to a place that had the same basic pad that had vibrate and heat added. personally, i do what i can to cool off so heat is something i dont need. i got mine at Big 5 i think...
     
    #9 DaveinOlyWA, Jun 7, 2005
  10. bobc

    bobc New Member

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    Madhungarian.

    I raised my driver's seat as you're wanting to do.

    I raised only the front and brought it up 1" higher.

    As you've noticed, the front bold is angled such that when adding spacers, the seat moves slightly forward. Not really a problem up front but the two holes in the rear of the rails no longer line up with the holes in the car body. So, you have to file these holes to make them bigger if you want to raise the seat a fair amount.

    I'll also add that by adding spacers between the rail and the car body to raise the front of the seat also raises the whole seat a little, too.

    The seat offers much more support now, I'm happy with it.

    Cheers,
     
    #10 bobc, Jun 8, 2005
  11. oly_57mpg

    oly_57mpg New Member

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    Cool!
     
    #11 oly_57mpg, Jun 8, 2005
  12. MadHungarian

    MadHungarian Member

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    Bobc: Elongate the rear holes! I'm ashamed of myself for not inventing that solution (perhaps if I had spent more time crawling around on the floor of the car . . . . .). Cool indeed! Thank you, and thanks also for taking the extra time to take and post photos. There are good people on this forum.
     
    #12 MadHungarian, Jun 9, 2005
  13. MarinJohn

    MarinJohn Senior Member

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    There are good people on this forum.
    [/quote]

    MadHungarian you got that right and in spades. The people in this forum are like family as they seem to want to help when ever they can, and offer support when that is all they can do. It also helps that the site is set up so well. And if you want to dabble in contentious debate there is FHOP which may get a little heated/opinionated at times, but is still much fun to participate in, and where one can see and learn from both sides of an issue.
     
    #13 MarinJohn, Jun 9, 2005
  14. bobc

    bobc New Member

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    Madhungarian,

    Let me add three other tidbits of info:

    If you only add a couple of washers to raise the seat, no big deal. But, if you raise it as much as I did, there's something else you need to consider: On the front of the seat, where the holes are that the bolts go through, on the underside, there's a metal lip surrounding the hole. Check out the photo.

    This is the only thing that washers are in contact with. Since I raised the seat 1", there's more shear stress (torque) on the bolt and spacers with the seat that much higher above the anchor point. I wanted more surface area contact between the seat bottom and the spacer to reduce the stress. So, I created my own spacer (out of aluminum) and bored out the top of the spacer so that the spacer would extend past this metal lip and contact the bottom of the seat rail directly. This results in the seat rail sitting on top of the spacer and not the metal lip, so there is less torquing and a lesser chance of shearing in the event of an accident.

    Ugh, I can't seem to write this so it makes sense. If someone else can help out, great... But, take a look at the photos, and see that the metal lip in the following photo sits down inside the top of the spacer shown above.

    The second piece of info is that with too much height, there's a tradeoff: Even though, the front of the seat is really getting lifted, the whole seat is higher, too. At some point, too much lift results in your head being closer to the ceiling, and you're stuck looking out front window near the top of the glass.

    Also, any spacers greater than and inch results in too much filing for the back bolts. The holes get too close to the rear of the seat rails.
    Cheers,

    -bob
     
    #14 bobc, Jun 9, 2005
  15. MadHungarian

    MadHungarian Member

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    bobc:

    Thanks for the additional input, and I share your concern with the maintenance of the safety of the vehicle. And if rear-ended, I agree that a lot of force would be exerted (rearwards and upwards as the vehicle moves foward and the seat-back tries to pivot back) on those bolts. But those are pretty hefty bolts . . . I think you haver an extra martgin of safety, but I also think I could get by without the additional modifications. But then again. I'm a pretty hefty person (200 lbs). Do others have opinions on this?
     
    #15 MadHungarian, Jun 10, 2005
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