Battling the seat problem

good question. i don't recall any plug n play either. will be interesting if anyone has. i thought the camry mod was sweet, but a bit of work. all the best!

 

Hey, after getting to drive the family Prius I’ve been lurking at Priuschat a lot. I see so many of these seat threads that I thought I should post up pictures of the seat replacement that my dad and his machinist did. I know this thread is not new and this mod isn’t exactly plug n play but the 2005 Prius that I’m driving now has a Recaro Specialist S seat that my dad put in over a year ago. He drives a Mitsubishi EV around town but uses my new Prius for going out of town once or twice a month. He couldn’t drive the Prius though with the stock seat any distance without it hurting his back. Seems he is not alone. The seat in our Prius now allows him to drive long distance without it killing his back.

Here’s a good overall shot of the seat in the car. He says that since it’s black he can transfer it to another car if we ever need to. I wish it was tan:



Here’s me in my comfy seat. I’m 5’6” for reference:


This is what the left bracket looks like when you open the door. The two side plates are CNC milled out of two pieces of 4” by 2” 6061 aluminum:


This is the bottom of the seat and bracket set. You can see that he was able to reuse the stock seat sliders:


He wanted to be able to use the stock seat position sensor so the airbag in the steering wheel will deploy with the correct amount of force. The aftermarket seat bracket he bought didn’t allow for this:


Here’s a close-up of the seat position sensor:


The stock seat rails are very high quality so he wanted to reuse them. He had to remove one spot welded bracket from the front of each side since they interfered with the Recaro seat:


Here’s the seatbelt side of the bracket. Not pretty, but you can’t see it:


Here’s a close-up of the roll pins that keep the seatbelt receptacle centered and still allow it to move like stock:


Let me know what you think!

 

wow! you have a great dad, what else can i say? thanks for posting!

 

nice work they did there.

 

~

 

Nice. Now get a matching seat for the passenger

 

So cool...your dad rocks.

You know, you could always get tan seat covers - maybe Wet Okole - to get the seats to match closer if you wanted. Then he could still transfer that seat and remove the cover as necessary.

For others who are having lumbar issues, Wet Okole makes an inflatable lumbar insert to go with their covers that might work for you.

There happens to be a group buy going on on the Toyota Tacoma Forums - Tacoma World board for 20% off including the lumbar insert. You have to join TacomaWorld as a member (free) to get the discount, but they are allowing discounts for all car models, not just Tacomas.

[I'm not a Wet Okole rep nor even a customer - just providing some ideas.]

 

silly question, but do you have an srs light?

 

Not a silly question in the least. She has a resistor plugged into the Airbag connector under the seat.

Jim

 

Here is a fully functioning, 2012 manual Camry seat in our 2005 Prius. The Prius airbag was swapped into the seat and the stock Prius seat rails were used to retain the seat position sensor so the steering wheel bag goes off with the correct force. This seat moves back 2 more inches than a stock Prius seat and can sit both higher and lower than the stock Prius seat. No need to buy seat extension brackets. Clearly, my boy is too young and short to drive but the pic shows that the seat would work well for the five foot tall driver as well as the six foot, five inch driver.

 

Well done, Jim. So am I correct to conclude that you had to do no extra work than to mount the seat onto the Prius rails?

And is the comfort of the seat a huge improvement? Just curious, what does a used Camry seat go for?

 

Thank you, Yakoma. The $100 Camry seat I bought from my local salvage yard is at least 100% better than the Prius seat. It is better in some ways than the Recaro. It is easier to get into and out of and it was $600 cheaper.

There is extra work to mount the Camry seat to the Prius seat rails. First, you have to remove and prepare the seat rails. Here is a video we shot of removing the rails from the Prius seat:

Next, you have to remove the Camry seat from the Camry seat rails. This is done by drilling out four mild steel rivets:


I mounted the Camry seat to three custom adapter pieces I made. Two of these parts have been refined to production quality while the last one will remain as mock up quality unless there was a compelling reason to make a kit. I have spoken to the forum owner Daniel about offering a kit but have received less than adequate financial detail to pursue the project. Maybe if there was interest I could get his attention so that I might offer the parts in the PriusChat store. I already have an aftermarket parts company related to another make so selling these parts would be better handled through this site.

 

A picture of the lumbar mechanism in the manual Camry seat. This is easily adjusted to your liking but Toyota decided not to equip the lower spec Camry's with lumbar adjustment knobs so you would need to make your adjustments before putting the upper seat fabric back on. I just used a piece of coat hanger wire strapped between the upper part of the lumbar brace looped down through the eyelet at the bottom of the red line. If you bought a power seat it they have a nicely set up lumbar adjustment system with no fiddling necessary.


Here is a picture of how much distance there is from the dash to the back of the Camry seat when in it's rearmost position:



Here is the Prius seat, all the way back:



Back seat knee room with the Camry seat, all the way back. I'm 5'7" with a 30" inseam:



Prius rear seat knee room with the seat all of the way back. Bear in mind that the Camry seat is a good bit bigger:

 

The Camry seat's side airbag has a totally different connector than the Prius airbag. I could have made an electrical adapter to go between the Prius airbag wiring plug to the Camry airbag connector but I instead chose to transplant the Prius airbag into the Camry seat. It is not hard at all to do:



Prius airbag without cloth cover bolted to seat frame:



Here's a picture of the Camry airbag. You can see the Prius bag on the ground:

 

I chose the 2012 and newer Camry seat since they are the most likely to be in nice condition. The Avalon seats use the same frame as the Camry but the Avalon is more rare in salvage yards. There are a zillion late model Camry's in salvage yards around the country and offering a $100 bill and a six pack on a Friday afternoon is all you need to buy one, power seats included. I bought a grey manual seat for this project since I know someone with a grey interior but here is what I would have for my car:

 

If anyone is interested in this mod you can go to your local Toyota dealer and sit in a 2012-2015 Camry seat. You will see that a Camry seat would transform a Prius. Just the width and relative softness of the Camry seat is way beyond a Prius seat.

The bracket set I have come up with would allow full adjustment for the height of the front of the seat. You can sit the front of the seat up which more evenly distributes your weight along the bottom and back of the seat. Feels like sitting in a Lazyboy but with excellent lumbar and shoulder support. Another nice feature of the Camry seat is that on a long drive you can crank the seat all of the way up so you get the maximum amount of bend at your knee. It's like driving a truck or minivan. Feels like a different car.

 

Looking into installing Evo X seats, but curious about what resistor I'll need to use.

 

I have a brand new Wedge Engineering Recaro seat bracket and slider set for the Prius that I'd love to get rid of for $150 plus shipping...

 

by "set" do you mean passenger side too?