I have had my leatherete seats for 5 years now and i couldn't stand them no more. I needed a change. So once my best friend got himself an 08 STI i wanted it, we went to test drive it, I told him if he was going to get it that night I was taking it. The last 08 in MD it was, he got a great deal on it. so for two years I had been looking for seats until i found them in PA $265.00 for the set I couldn't go wrong.
after two days of mods and cleaning them and getting them stitched.
here is the final product.
Mini airbags are still in tact, with the seat warmers and passenger airbag sensor. It was a great learning experience and many cuts on my hands later, I could of not gone wrong, these seats are awesome.
note: if you are taking your old seats apart, don't forget to weare gloves.

 

wow... I really like those! What exactly did you do yourself?

I would initially thought maybe you installed them, but it sounds like you may have re-upholstered these yourself as well?

 

the seat brackets have razor edges. i cut up my hands in a few places. but nothing major, i ended up wearing some vinyl gloves so i wouldn't get blood on them.
i did not re-upholstered them at all. I bought these seats of off ebay a month or so ago, they are 04. But the condition of the seats are very close to new, as if they barely even sat on them.
so I took the seats apart, took the STI stitches off and had them washed and re-embroidered with the MINI logo. then this past weekend, i took my old seats out and took them apart to get all the electrorics out and transferred them off to the new seats. before all of this, we had to cut off all the brackets from the seat bottoms and added two flat brackets on each seat bottom, since these seats are a bit wider then OEM mini. Drill all four holes, made some washers and got new longer bolts for the seat belt buckles.
I still need to cut off some plastic molding on each side on the sills so the seats can glide much easier.

 

Are they lighter than the oem seats?

 

that was one thing i was going to do but forgot at the last minute before i took the mini seats apart, but i couldn't tell the difference when i picked them up. I really did this 'cause i needed something that could hold me in and not these leatherettes that were a pain. Plus I fractured my lumbar about a year ago and the mini seats were not helping my back at all. but now these suade seats are soooo much better, no more sliding. I am thinking of getting a schroth autocontrol II harness or the quick fit.



http://www.schrothracing.com/store/T...autocontrol-II

 

Nice Job
How did you do the airbag?

 

I used the STI's airbag bracket and modify it to hold the mini's airbag. I also opened up the mini airbag and cut 1/4 slip where the two bolts come out of the plastic casing and attached it to the STI's bracket, I did have to cut about 2" off that bracket and file down some holes and put the bracket backwards to accommodate the airbag and then filled in the crevices with spray foam.

 

Has this been NHTSA tested?

I am amazed at the creativity of some Mini owner

 

Here are some fabrication pictures.

This is the seat back with logo.

close up.

washers and flat bracket.

seat rail with brackets welded on.


Installing seat warmer and airbag sensor.

now this was a pain. removal of the seat back warmer.

here my friend is welding the brackets onto the rails.

 

not NHTSA but someone from FHWA did.

 

nicely done