When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Does anyone know what the difference between the R56 seats and the R57 (convertible I'm guessing). In other works can I use R57 seats in my R53?
I need some seats badly. Just the front seats I'm asking about. I know the rears are a lot different.
R57 rear seats will definitely not fit in a R53 .. but nor will R53 convertible seats. Convertible rear seats are totally different than non-convertible seats. Front seats should be the same (i.e. R56 front should be the same as R57 front, unless they have a rollbar built in, in which case they'll fit, but you'll have a rollbar!!)
Okay question here... I just installed R56 seats front and back into my R53. However, the rear hatch now struggles to close when the rear hatch cover seats in place. Anyone else have had this issue?
Okay question here... I just installed R56 seats front and back into my R53. However, the rear hatch now struggles to close when the rear hatch cover seats in place. Anyone else have had this issue?
Does the rear hatch close OK when there is no rear parcel shelf in the car? If so, I think you probably have a parcel shelf which has sagged a little bit at the back, where it is shaped to go around the rear wiper shape in the rear hatch.
Yes, it closes just fine when there is no rear shelf in the car. I do not see the sag but yes, the part that is hitting is the shape bulge where it goes around the wiper motor on the rear hatch.
Old thread I know, but I am thinking of doing the exact same thing you've done. Lounge leather R56 seats in an R53. Did you eventually get seat heaters installed or?
Torx Bits T40 and T60
3/8" Ratchet
Pliers
Wirestrippers (optional)
Diagonal Snips
Small Screwdrivers
Knife
Zip Ties
Beer (not shown)
***Remove you negative battery cable and let the car sit for 20-30 minutes. No use having an airbag deploy and ruin your new seats or having a permanently lit airbag light on your dash***
Grab that ratchet and T40 Torx bit and start removing the seat bolts, 4 per seat.
Now tilt the seat back and remove the electrical plugs for the Airbag (yellow) and seat belts (the other two). If you have heated seats there should be another black plug with some heavy gauge wiring. Pull those old seats out and be amazed at the years of crumbs and trash wedged in some of those areas. Take the time to really vacuum out this area. I've always thought I kept a clean car but apparently I dont have a small enough vacuum attachment to really get down in there...note to self!
Mmm tasty...Now you're going to remove the seat belt assembly from your R53 seats. This will installed on the newer R56 seats as the new buckles are different than the earlier models. To remove, use the T60 torx bit. Remember to pull towards you so you dont rack your knuckles on something hard and or sharp. This bolt is held down with blue loctite. Don't worry about all the nastiness in this area, we're going to clean up in a minute.
Now that you have that seatbelt bolt out, it's time to run the wires out. This is easier if you remove the plastic trim on the front and middle portion of the seat. This will open that area enough to easily feed those wires through.
Here is everything you should have removed so far. Seatbelt assembly, bolt and 4 qty seat bolts. Be sure to save that seatbelt bolt, it's a little bit longer than the R56 version and will thread right into the new seats.
Here, we are removing the seatbelts from the R56 seats. Same as above, hold the seat down and prepare to crank on that loctited bolt.
Moving on to the R56 seats. The 1st gen cars used multiple individual plugs, 2nd gen use this "all-in-one" plug. Fortunately the individual plugs are captive within this "master" plug. To separate, use a small flathead screwdriver and press the 2 retainers to slide out the plugs.
They'll come out just like this. You can toss that big ole' yellow plug now.
Now we're going to remove the airbag plug and replace with the plug from our 1st gen airbag. This allows the seat to plug right into the existing wire harness already in your car. There are 2 tiny little pin you press to remove the wires and their "pins".
Cut your old yellow airbag plug from your old seats. In hindsight I should have mended the newer plug to the in-car wiring harness. This way you can sell your old airbags and recoup some of your costs. I wanted to retain as much "stock integrity" as possible so I went this route.
You want to press out the inner plug from your freshly cut airbag connector. Be careful NOT to put your hand or fingers near that open end. The copper contacts are hard and sharp and you will put that SOB right through your finger...ask me how I know
Now that you have that inner plug out, remove that little pink retainer. Set aside so you dont lose it.
We're going to grab that little screwdriver again and press the old pins out. This will open up the pug to accept the new wires. Thankfully Mini kept them the same for stoopid easy swappin' ***Notice those lil bastard copper contacts. Do you really want THAT going into your finger? Me thinks not.
You'll want to trim some of that yellow sheathing from the airbag wire to give you enough room to install the pins. I used a knife and those wire strippers. Secondly, you want to align those pins so those detents grab and wont set your airbag light off in the future.
This is with the pins aligned and about to be installed back into the airbag connector. I left the gray portion out of the plug to ensure the connection would be made. You also want to re-install that little pink connector on the backside of that gray plug. I didn't take a pic because it was so small and easy.
This is the part that will likely cause some some controversy here. On the R53 seat there is a bolt (previously removed) and a pin for alignment of the seat belt assembly. On the R56 seat there is a bent steel "pin" that aligns the seatbelt assembly. I simply bent this piece flat with a pair of pliers and made sure to really crank down on that bolt.
Here we have the bolt installed, feel free to add a drop or two of some loctite to button everything up. I didn't but I might be removing the seats shortly to install heaters and take care of that then. Take car routing the wires through the seat frame. This unit slides on the rails so making the wires taught will limit the seat travel and possibly mess up your plugs/wiring.
Here are a few shots of the wiring, note zip tie location. Now its time to get those fancy new seats in!!!
This is the new seat tilted back with the plugs all attached. Note the airbag plug is in front of the bar, move it behind with the rest of the plugs.
Almost done!!! Time to crank those bolts down. Please clean them before installing, mine had a decent amount of grease on them. Go ahead and reconnect that battery cable and...
Revel in your new seat goodness. If you were used to the hard leatherette from the old seats like me, be prepared to sneak out at night and sit in your new seats naked...just kidding!
Please let me know if there are any questions.
hello can you please send me a msm to my whats -up 00351962295100. I need to as k you same question about my seats .my car is a mini one from 2002 Dezember and I have a seats from olimoic 2012 in leather need same advice.
thank you Orlando
I recently fitted some R56 GP2 Recaro seats into my car and learned a few things that I thought I'd add to this thread to hopefully help others in the future.
#1 - The seat heating can be made to work, but you'll need to adapt the wiring.
Please see the attached diagram I made to explain and illustrate. Hopefully it's clear enough for you.
#2 - You might need to buy a longer bolt.
Due to the different way that the R56 seatbelt tensioner attaches to the seat, if you use the R53 tensioner bolt then it only goes about 60% of the way into the bolt hole on the seat. Given that we're already compromising the setup by bending the tensioner locating pin out of the way to accomodate the R53 tensioner, I wasn't comfortable with this. I bought an M10 25mm bolt in 12.9 steel for added strength. This fills the bolt hole completely.
I bought my R56 seats without tensioners, so I don't know if the R56 bolt can be used here - but if you were planning on reusing the R53 bolt then take note of this.
#3 - Some cars have a differing numbers of connectors depending on location and spec options
My two UK cars (2004 and 2008 R52's) only have connectors 2, 4, and 5. I don't fully understand why, and neither did any of the commenters who commented on the Facebook group post I made about this, but there's a real mix of wiring combinations out there. The important thing is that you shouldn't be alarmed if you have a different number of connectors on your cars seat wiring harness.
Connectors 3 and 4 come directly from the seatbelt tensioner. So if you're reusing your own R53 seatbelt tensioners then they should match the number of connectors that your car has for the tensioner.
1 - Seat Occupancy Sensor (White) (maybe? - possibly only on US cars? - only on the passenger side in US cars?)
2 - Seat Heating (Black)
3 - Seatbelt Buckle Sensor (Black)
4 - Seatbelt Tensioner (Blue)
5 - Airbag (Yellow)
#4 - I had bushings made as I didn't like that the tensioner bolt is in free air when fitted to the R56 seat (you almost certainly don't need to do this)
The R53 tensioner mounts onto the R53 seat via a welded bushing which helps to lock the tensioner in place. The R56 seat doesn't have this, so the bolt sits in free air as it passes through the tensioner. It just "looked wrong" to me, so I had some bushings made to make the bolt fit snug through the tensioner. I'm almost certain that this doesn't add any strength, as the new bushing isn't welded to the seat, but it was just bugging me how it looked without it.
For anyone who wants to do the same, the spec is: 14mm Outer Diameter - 10mm Inner Diameter - 15mm Depth (x2)
Ignore the length of the bolt in the picture on the right, this is just a test bolt I was using while waiting for the correctly sized bolt to arrive. The picture on the left is with the stock R53 tensioner bolt. You can see how little thread is available to enter the seat.
Hope this helps!
Last edited by captain_flutemeister; Nov 6, 2025 at 05:06 AM.
