Spring Break Project - S197 seats

Couldn't believe it - after watching them come and go on eBay and scouring the boards for months, there was a set out of a 2007 GT at a local dismantler in the right color (and leather to boot!) and at a good price. A lot of dust from sitting in a warehouse for who knows how long but only 30K miles on them and they're in fantastic condition (need to smooth out the passenger headrest, must've been leaning on something) - driver side bolsters look almost like new under all the dust.

Charcoal seems to be the most plentiful of the leather seats so you shouldn't have to much trouble finding some if you decide to go that way.

The black pony cloth seats look really good to me too - I might have taken that if I couldn't find the grey leather but then I don't think they would've looked right unless I switched the carpet to black too. The grey pony cloth looks OK, but not as sharp as the black - I'd kinda resigned myself to those though until I found these yesterday.

Here's what they'll be replacing.





The thigh support is down to the metal under the fabric - it hasn't torn through but the foam is completely crushed and disintegrating under there and so my left leg is riding pretty much on the frame.

A friend at work has the exact same seats in his '07 GT convertible and they are so much more comfortable than the SN95 seats were even back before they were worn out.

I haven't had a chance to start measuring yet but my understanding is that they are lower, especially if you swap the seat frames to SN95 tracks - apparently spacers are required to get them up high enough to see over the dash if you do that. Next week I'll get them out from under wraps and start fitting them and I can tell you for sure and give you some measurements.

I know what you mean - as someone said here years ago, it's like you sit on a Mustang, not in it.

GDawg said:

Power seats? Mine has an up and down control as well as a front and back control...

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Yeah, the up/down control moves it from "too high" to "even higher!"

LarsD said:

I'm always messing with those stupid buttons and I can never get low enough.



I'm 6'0", I know the car is named after a horse, it doesn't mean I want to feel like I am riding one.

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6'5" here.

A cheap and easy solution is Fox manual seat tracks - they lower the driver's seat about a 1/2" which doesn't sound like a lot but it is a noticeable difference - just the extra bit of clearance I needed between my leg and the wheel.

After looking at some brackets I found online and reading through some more swap threads, the S197 seats are definitely lower the SN95 seats. The brackets to adapt the S197 tracks have about a 3/4"~1" rise in them and if you swap the seat frames on to your SN95 rails you need about a 5/8" spacer in the front and an inch in the back. I'll try to get some firm measurements this weekend or next week when I get started on it.

Seats are (mostly) in!







Rear seats are roughed in. Still need to do some upholstery work to tighten and tidy things up.

The fronts are mounted on SN95/Fox rails. I ended up going that way mostly out of expediency. Fairly straitforward job of drilling a few new holes in the seat frames to mount the rails. I added a 1-1/8" spacer in the front and 7/8" in the rear to get the seats up high enough to sit in and to clear the floor pan on the outsides and at the front and so the rails clear the trim on the front of the seats. I moved the seats towards the middle of the car by about 3/4" which centered them better - that required moving the rails over on the seat frame which allowed me to reuse some factory holes but required drilling new holes in the outside track feet because there wasn't enough extra width on the frames to shift them both rails over that far.

Some people use oversized nuts and extra washers for spacers but I made bushings out of some steel tubing that was just big enough to slip over the mounting bolts between the seat frame and tracks instead - it's neater but I'm not entirely comfortable with the setup because either way, I suspect the bolts could shear off in an accident with that much leverage on them. A sturdily braced bracket that bolts to the seat frame and then bolts to the rails would be better.

The rear seats required a good bit of work to get them to the point you see. The seat bottoms needed several inches trimmed off the back of them and a little off the corners - I cut the plastic frame and some of the padding but just tucked the seat cover under for now, just couldn't bring myself to take a knife to leather yet. I attached sections of strip wood across the front to stiffen it and attached the mounting pins from the old seats to them so the bottom section pops in more-or-less like the old one did. The uppers sections I removed the covers and foam and mounted them on the original frames - the tops of the frames had to be trimmed to match the shoulders of the new covers and the foam had to be trimmed on the back to fit neatly on the taller frames. I also had to cut a couple inches of foam off the outsides of the backs to fit the narrower rear seat opening. I need to do a little trimming and sewing on the seat backs to get them fitting snuggly on the frames - right now the extra material is just stuffed around the back - and to cover the hinges up neatly. I also need to put the latching mechanism back in but that'll be last. The bottoms need a little support on the outsides and I need to tighten the covers up in some areas and add some stuffing in others. Finally, I need to fill in the holes where the shoulders on the uppers are with something

I also have some more cleaning to do to them and the could probably stand some conditioning after being stored for some time but most of the dirt & dust wiped right up.

So far, I'm very happy with them. The fronts are much better seats - more comfortable and much better looking - than the stock SN95 seats and the color match is just about perfect with the Dove Grey interior pieces. They look like they belong there more than stock seats do.

The rears are a lot of work and I'm not sure if they're worth it if you have/can find a SN95 rear that is a close color match for the fronts but I think they're going to look really good when done, even if no one ever sits back there. I really like the look of them, kind of like a late-60s/early 70's 'Stang... and, they are fairly comfy and the deep buckets actually give any unfortunate back seat passengers some extra headroom.