Took this advice. Worked perfectly. Thanks!

 

I have Sparco Torino cloth seats in my (2) MCS's and love them. They are a lot lower than a stock MINI seat, when I sat in a friends R53, it felt like sitting on a kids chair with phonebooks!!

 

That price is per seat . Hence why I only bought the drivers seat...for now

 

I believe I may have found something that works pretty well, for me anyway.

1. I went to a foam shop and bought two strips of 1/2" high density foam.

2. One strip I cut to exactly match the section in between the "wings" on the seat bottom...this hugely improved the situation there. It's thin but it's high density so that you actually sit a little bit higher (I lowered the seat to compensate) but you still get the control of the wings.

3. The other strip I cut to match the section in between the wings on the seat back. This is a little trickier because you need to find exactly where to put it to make up for the football-sized lumbar thing properly. What I'll probably do is get some 1/2" low-density foam to put on the bottom edge of the high density stuff so that I don't feel the edge on my back. This seems to help a bit, though not as much as the seat bottom foam -- probably enough, though, to make it worth it to keep these seats.

4. Next all I have to do is get the foam pieces covered in a similar chocolate color, and use some fabric tape to attach. The foam itself was only $10 and covering shouldn't be more than $40 or something -- much less expensive than new seats!

I should have tried all of this before I started whining on this thread. I'm also going to try tilting the seat back as recommended above, and see what that does.

 

Do you know what size fender washers you used (the size of the hole, and the diameter)?

Thanks,
Noah

 

You do know there's an adjustment handle for the lumbar, right?
It's on the right on the driver's seat, about 1/2 way up the seatback.

I found I could adjust the lumbar in my '09 to a comfortable spot with no problem, and it makes me wonder if the one in the '03 is working right, although as you change the adjustment on the '03 you can tell a difference - it goes from bad to worse!

 

Yes I do. The lumbar at its lower position is still wrong for me...it's placed in the wrong place for my back. For my 2010 it's like you said it was for the '03: from bad to worse.

 

I used 1/2 inch SS washers because I have a whole box of them, but they were a little big. I used 6 on each side (6 washers made about a 3/8 inch stack). I didn't use fender washers, the regular 1/2" ones worked just fine. There isn't a whole lot of room there. I didn't loosen the rear bolts, there's enough slop in the system to get the washers in, no problem.

They slid around a bit and trying to get them all lined up was kind of tricky. I used a pair of needle nosed pliers to help position them (a nail or anything pointy would work). Alternatively, you could superglue them all together, that would make the process a lot less frustrating. I also dropped one of the bolts into the rail somehow and it got hung up in the mechanism. I fished it out with a magnetic retrieving tool and some jockeying of the seat back and forth.

It was officially, my first Mini-mod!

 

I also am using 1/2 inch SS washers for exactly the same reason as jgohlke -- I had a whole bunch of them

Whatever you use, I think stainless is best to avoid any sort of corrosion damage to the carpet or to the seat rail.

Its a very simple mod, but you'll be surprised at the change in the feel of the seat. And you can "tweak" it by adding or removing washers till you get it just right.

Good luck.

 

So youse guys are raising the front edge of the seat? I'd think this would put more pressure on the sides of your legs against the "wings"......I may have to try this.....

 

Dave:

Yep, just rasing the front edge relative to the back edge. It seems to move the pressure point back and actually relieves the pressure against the wings.

Try it -- its cheap, and more importantly, its totally reversible if you don't like it.

I first did this on my 87 Honda CRX. It had the same issue with the seat and it fixed it there, too.

YOu can also experient with "twisting" the seat a bit by making it a bit higher on only one side. You'll be surprised how much you can tweat the seating position this way.

And don't forget your passenger, too. He/she may also want to be made a bit more comfortable.

(BTW Dave -- I had a 65 E-type hardtop -- the last of the 3.8 litre cars as I remember. I oved it, I couldn't afford its care and feeding, but I loved it. I had more money before I had kids, but I was richer after they came)

 

Herleman! If I could give you an electronic man hug, I would.

I raised the front by about 1/2" and it's made a subtle but noticeable difference. I would still like for the wings to not come in as far as they do (that's one difference between a really good sport seat and these, in my opinion), but this shifted the weight so that it's equally transferred across my legs and rear.

Thanks so much for turning me on to this! It took 5 minutes and about $19 for washers and a star wrench key. This combined with the thin hi-density foam on the back has made these seats doable for me.

Cheers,
Noah

 

I'm glad it helped.