the driver seat when i bought my checkmate in fall of 2023 was in pretty good shape, but it did have some wear that needed to be addressed. when i went to get it repaired, i ran into some obstacles i didn't know i was going to face.

with the checkmate, i have front seats that only came in the checkmate edition...they're a mix of (real) blue leather and gray cloth.
1) heated seats - my seats are heated. the heater element is glued between the seat cover and the seat foam. when i removed the seat cover, it destroyed the warmer element on the upright part of my seat.
2) leather - apparently leather is near impossible to repair because you have to try to get the stitches back in the original holes. cloth isn't an issue like this.

so, trying to find another checkmate with a seat in good shape that i could buy was tough. the few i found either were destroyed or the junk yards wouldn't ship. that meant i was either going to have to pay someone to stitch new covers for my gen 1 seats which was going to be over $300/ea for the bottom pricing i could find...or i needed new seats.

now i have to decide between a couple factors:
1) gen 1 seats - fit easily and will be plug and play. however, they aren't super comfortable and they tend to rip at the seams.
2) gen 2 seats - will bolt in, but the wiring will need to be spliced to work. also, you have to move the seatbelt latch from the old seat to the new one. they are more comfortable, though, and seem to hold up better.

in the end, i decided i prefer cloth to leather lounge seats, and obviously prefer over the cheap vinyl. and i was glad to find some with a checkered pattern to compliment my checkmate.




i like the checker pattern vs some of the solid plain seats i've seen.






the challenge here is swapping the seat belt buckles to the new seats. under the buckle of my car, there are a couple of pegs. one is just a stud and one is threaded for the bolt.





here you can see the differences. the buckle on top has a larger hole. the hole in the buckle from the new seats is smaller. and instead of a stud like my old seats, the new one has a tab that's folded up on the top left corner of the metal.

 

the first thing i did was make a little template on cardboard to get the stud in the right location on my new seats. and i drilled out a hole big enough for a bolt.




then i cut off the threaded stud from the old seat to move to the new seat.


i got it pretty flush.



no "after" pics, but here's what i was going for. i ended up welding only the stud. the threaded piece is more like a sleeve within the seat belt buckle.



this allowed me to get the new seats mounted. i gave them one cleaning already, but they'll need more to get to where i want them.

also, there were reports that the r56 seats sat so much higher than it was an issue for some folks. i'm dang near 6'2" and these are fine. i adjusted them to be as low as possible and that was low enough.

 

now the last step for installation...wiring...

i need to get my hands on the wiring diagrams so i can tell which wires to splice to which.

here is the new wiring harness from the new seats. they don't have a heater, so they have fewer wires than my old ones.


the pigtail on the right is for the heater, so it will not be used.




i'm going to search, as well, but if there's a link somewhere for the diagrams, i'd love a link.