Hey everyone,
I am curious about what different non-OEM seats you folks have installed in your 69 Cougars. I’m looking to upgrade the front seats and would love some ideas and tips. Not looking to spend a fortune on fancy racing seats, looking to grab a decent pair from a local pick-N-pull. Hoping someone has installed newer seats and can share how difficult it was.
Thanks for your help,
Joe
Pontiac Fiero seats are a nice upgrade from stock and fairly easy to swap in if you make an adapter and keep your Cougar seat tracks.
Any particular year or years on the Fiero seats? I figured I would have to make some sort of adapters for any seats that I found.
Thanks for the tip, now I just have to go find a Fiero in the scrap yard.
Any other suggestions out there?
Thanks,
Joe
I have been looking into this as well since my front seats need covers and foam. Thats going to push the cost up for my original substantially so I was looking at something more comfortable
What might be easier then fiero seats would be fox body mustang or sn95 mustang seats. Also some bmw seats make for good swaps too like the E90 era seats.
Take a look at TMI, they make a brand new replacement seat, both low back and high back.They seem to match better then late model seats IMO and they are about 800bucks but by the time you find a used set of seats and have them recovered your going to be close to that anyway
Any year would work. If you’re looking for more room, these seats are lower than stock and you can mount them further back. Earlier years have speakers in the headrest which can be removed. Later years without the speakers seem to be a little roomier. The adapters are just angle or flat steel with one set of holes for the seats and a second set for the tracks - pretty easy.
I found a set of Porsche, BMW and Audi seats locally, but I want to bring the car to where the seats are located to test fit them. I’d hate to spend all that money and end up with seats that don’t fit. It seems that you need to look for seats made before 2005 in order to find them without air bags. I don’t mind if they are powered and heated, but they need to flip forward in order to let someone get into the back seat.
Has anyone gone the heated route? If so, how did you wire them up? Is it as simple as connecting them to a 3 position switch with power? Or is a matter of having to hook it up to relays etc.? The power adjust will hopefully be easy to connect because all the controls are built into the seat itself.
Why am I doing this again? oh yeah, comfort, lumbar support and adjustability for an old broken body like mine.
For those of you that don’t like the idea of retro-modding these old cars, I have a 69 XR 7 428 SCJ Drag Pack Car that I will not change a thing on that is not stock. I understand and appreciate both view points. So one is for show and the other is for driving a lot.
Many seat heaters are pulse width modulated so you would need to get a controller to run them.
Recaros that were an option in 79-82 Mustangs and the “Box Fox” Thunderbirds and Cougars. I used Mustang mounting brackets I purchased from a local accessory shop that sold Recaros. Many years ago. I had the seats and rear seat upholstered to match my car. This was many years ago. I still have the seats and brackets.
I used Wedge brackets for my Recaro seats in my '69. Hole alignment on the brackets was close but needed a little tweaking. Few minutes with the carbide burr and they went in.