Best Seats

[geezerstiva]

i dont think there are any that are direct swaps. they all require some modification either to the festiva or the seats you are swapping in. i think.

[mattswabb]

what is the best direct seat swap with no fab work if non then how hard are the protege seats to install

Look at my posts for the prelude seats. They ARE the easiest swap.

[festivaWES]

Swap out the bottom foam and fabric to the festiva wslider tracks, and keep the other donor seat back. Mx-3 and protege both work this way.

Check out my protege seat swap thread.

[todd00]

i think the stock LX seats are pretty nice, and dont hurt my back on long trips either. the mr2 i had killed my back on long trips. i dont care for the kind with the large side bolsters, they seem to get worn getting in and out pretty easily. its about individual comfort as well as looks. both seat pics look nice though. tinwhiskers 88 has escort gt seats he swaped. there is a pic of his seats in his ad in the for sale section, they look nice and i think were easy to do also.

[Damkid]

i think B6T said that the 323gtx seats were great.
ahh here it is "The seats are from a 323GTX and required the fabrication of brackets to fit in the Festiva. They are as much of a necessity to a Festiva as gas and oil... that's how much better they are then the stock plywood seats. 323GT (sedan) seats are not the same, they are a lot more flat and don't have nearly as much support and bolstering as the GTX seats." heres a picture.

those seats are very very comfy!!

[25Horseplay]

I used a set of Tracer seats. Just changed out the bottom of the seat frame with a Festiva one and they bolted right in! I believe this would also work with Escort seats. You just put the doner seat material on the Festiva seat bottom and the top of the seat bolted right on.

[packrat427]

I wanted some Prelude seats , but I guess I will do with what I have now .

[ejp2fast]

I wanted some Prelude seats , but I guess I will do with what I have now .

haha! yeah.... you'll have to upgrade from those soon.. Those sure are NICE!

[packrat427]

Thanks !!

It feels like a great privilege to own these .

I remember when Rolla was waiting on these and installed them , and I Droooled over them as well as everyone else .

I never thought they would be in my car...EVER ..LOL

Thank you Dan (Levitan) for giving the honor and privilege of being able to own these .

I now have seats that are really worth more than I paid for the car ..LOL

[bobstad]

Built for comfort, not speed...

This is a little hard to see, but here is my '66 VW square-back sedan(in Spokane next to the old casket factory by the river in Peaceful Valley) sporting a pair of '50 Chevy one ton panel front bucket seats.(shotgun is a jump seat which folds forward though looking little different from the driver's seat...)

These replaced a pair of folding lawn chairs the one for the driver of which, had slowly collapsed into an evolutionarily reinforced finally sturdy facsimile of a formula One seating position I really liked; though a WSP("Wasp") patrolman west of Davenport, WA wasn't too pleased, so bearing away a warning ticket and passing through Brewster, WA later that same day, one of my favorite wrecking yards yielded these seats from an interesting rig which seemed entirely intact when I'd arrived-that had had most of the roof behind the front seats torched off and replaced with a nicely fitted cab-over type camper normally used on a pick-up.

I've not been to Spokane since the fall of '94; though now since fairly close here in Bellingham the temptation is to see if I'd truly had fans there.

The VW was sold to young Todd Molyneux(son of the criminal couple depicted in the movie and film THE FRENCH CONNECTION, born after those events; who'd been a local entrepreneur promoting musical events aspiring to play Latin percussion, and also with his own VW junk yard) planning to use my car's recently installed Ghia Type III brand new seven year-old dragster transmission* in a bus he had then.

The VW also had amazing '67 Camaro front bucket seats in the rear; with both the Chevy panel seats in front and the Camaro seats in the rear I'd made a custom galvanized metal bracket for, fitting as well or better than the stock seats; and profoundly more comfortable.

The notion all four might somehow fit into my Festiva is of course my mad desire. Though probably an amazing fiction at best to conceive of. Those Chevy one-ton front buckets were amazing, the first time I drove on the driver's seat feeling exactly like sitting on a water bed.(with fortunately too little room in front of my lap for an unfortunate seeking sympathy for their "perv" orientation problems; one of the downsides of the "Spokaloo" environment in times past)

*Purchased from a musician in El Cerrito, CA for $300 he'd had sitting in his basement in a project car which had never been finished since he'd suddenly started picking up gigs.(I'd installed a week later early in August of '94 in the parking lot of Studio 321@ 321 Jefferson Street in Olympia, WA working nights a couple evenings due to the 104 degree heat during the day, with only a flashlight and kerosene lamp for illumination; which got me from there to Peaceful Valley where I'd gotten suddenly inspired by an old Econoline panel seen across the street from where I was sleeping in the back of the VW[a special platform using the stock metal frame under the stock rear seat bottom, fitted with a plywood surface my therma-rest air mattress I still have matched perfectly-which often replaced the Camaro buckets when my domicile rather than fully passengered] which led to my getting a $600 '75 1/2 ton Chevy panel van I'd attempted to fix up to live out of, until unexpected terminal engine failure[13,447 odometer miles past my "mickey re-build" of the motor in Peaceful Valley] stranded me in Eureka, CA April of '96 nearly a dozen years...)

[Arnie]

02 WRX seats in Festiva



I first installed the complete seat. I was able to install 3 of the 4 mounting points by creating some brackets out of flat steel bar stock. just drilled two holes and used Grade 8 bolts. However, the seat was really, really high. My wife, who is 5'2" only had about 3" of head room! They felt great but it was just silly.

So I took the driver's seat apart and saw that the seatback could fit the festiva bottom with just a bit of tweaking. did the passenger side and saw that it was completely different to the driver's seat but was also able to make it work. So now i have, at least, decent side support for the upper body and a normal seat height.

[festivaWES]

I have a sparco in one of mine with a civic seat braket and only have to fab two of the mounts... Those WRX seats are nice!

[Arnie]

Thanks! Yeah, the 02's were the best seats that the WRX/STi's got in the US. All the other seats have very poor bolsters. Designed for the american fatties. :lol: Yeah, would have preferred to go with a dedicated seat bracket and tried to keep the entire seat but i couldn't be bothered with the cost and hassle of leaving the car with a fabricator. One of these days. The WRX seats were free so, what the heck.

[festivaWES]

We have a set of STI's in my works warehouse. I eyeball them everytime i go up there!

[Arnie]

If you are hefty guy, they hold you okay, but if you are small to medium build, you flop around and sit ON the seats rather than in them. The JDM STi seats have much more aggressive bolstering but no side airbags.