Swapped in some seats out of an 89 H*nda CRX over the weekend.  I had these in my 240Z but the seat height there had my head too close to the ceiling and just never quite felt right.  In the tracker the seat height worked out to pretty much the same as the originals.

What a big improvement.  They're not a spring supported type like the factory Tracker seats are (the CRX are just foam on a steel sheet frame) so you do feel road bumps a little bit more but it's a cushioned firm feel not harsh.  Even still, they sure are more comfortable.  Because of the goofy arrangement on the stock mounting rails in the tracker with the outboard ones being 3.5" longer and on "stilts" compared to the inboard rail, it was a little more involved, but it turned out pretty nice.  

I (should say we, my friend helped a lot too) had to fab a riser out of some 1.5" square tubing on the outboard ones, but all in all it was pretty easy.  We kept the factory slider mechanisms underneath the 1.5" tubing so the front/rear slider adjustment is still there.  

I got a couple more inches of legroom too (other tall people take note) and the new seats have a more even amount of support across the back of the legs since they gradually raise toward the front.  The old seats always felt like they almost sloped forward to me.  

There's only a couple things to do still.  First I need to grind a few more notches into the reclining ratchet mechanism so it leans up a smidgen further.  It's not bad as it is, but the furthest forward position is still leaning back a little more than I like it to be.  Secondly, the upholstery doesn't match since the CRX seats I had are blue.  Honestly it doesn't look that bad with the gray interior but I might have to look into reupholstery or some seat covers.

The additional benefit of the way we made the seat adapters is that they now have a flat even top surface so adding any other aftermarket seats down the road would be much easier.  

The only materials we used were about 8 feet of 1.5" square steel tubing and about 1 foot of some 1.5" x 1/4" cold rolled bar stock. The tubing we used is some 11 guage stuff that my friend had laying around, you could probably use thinner wall material and be fine, but this stuff is absolutely burly and made for a very solid feeling set of adapters.  It was a little overkill, but what's an extra 2 or 3 lbs when you consider a solidly mounted seat is going to protect you if you're rear ended.

The inboard side is just the 1.5" tubing bolted to the original slider mechanism.  This made for a factory seat height.  It's probably not exact, I didn't measure, but sitting in the old seat and the new seat I could fit four fingers between the top of my head and the front edge of the B pillar/Targa bar/whatever it's called  in a soft top tracker. So if it's not exact, it's witin about 1/4" or so anyway.  The outside is the 1.5" tubing bolted to the CRX seat and then we made legs down to tabs made of the bar stock with more of the square tubing and welded them in.

If you've got a drill press, chopsaw, welder,  the time, and can find some CRX seats at a junkyard I'd highly recommend this swap.  

You might be able to use other seats too, but there's a couple reasons the CRX seats are a good choice for an easy seat swap.  First, they're fairly easy to find, if you want even bigger and better side bolsters, I believe the CRX Si seats are more "sporty".  Second, they're pretty lightweight, by themselves I'd say the seats are slightly lighter than the factory Tracker/Kick seats are. (adapter rails are probably 7 lbs or so per seat) Third, they're an excellent match widthwise as they're only 1/2" or so wider than the stock seats are.  Fourth, the CRX seats have flat evenly spaced holes on the bottom to bolt them to adapter rails which makes them a pretty good "universal" replacement type seat.  Just four threaded bolt holes on the bottom of the CRX seats.  12" centers front to back, and they're also evenly spaced side to side. (15.75" if I recall correctly)

If anyone wants some more info let me know and I can give you the dimensions for making some adapters for yourself.

Thansk for the info, Z3bra. The seats in my Tracker feel a lot like a park bench. They are a little short, too, so they don't support my thighs much. Better seats would be nice. I had been wondering if later model Trackers or Vitaras or whatever would have better seats that might go in easily. I have mounted seats in other vehicles. I put some Toyota seats in an old Nissan pickup once that made a lot of difference, and put some Fiat (!) seats in an old VW bus once. None of them required any serious mounting fabrication. I don't weld, so that's a problem for me. I suppose I could get the local welding shop to help out.

Yeah the shortness/lack of thigh support was the main reason I did the swap.  It was making my butt hurt (well tailbone technically) since most of my weight was resting on my tailbone and not across the back of my thighs.

I don't know that you could do this swap like I did it without welding, the way the legs are angled out on the outboard side I can't think of a good way to just bolt it together or anything.

You could possibly use the seat base from the old seats which is just a ring of 1" or so tubing on top of the legs but you'd have to cut some stuff off of that  such as the springs/webbing from the underside of the existing seats and the back part where the seat back hinge and mechanism attaches would also have to have some pieces cut off of it for starters.  If you're taller it would possibly work but if you're shorter than me (6'4"ish) I think the new seat height would be a bit low.  Spacers or something could work and I think with some clamp type hardware or U bolts it might be possible without welding. Might be worth a try, start with your passenger seat though in case it runs into snags if you need to be able to drive it.  When I put the CRX seats in my 240Z all I did was use some tabs made out of 1/4" by 1 1/4" bar stock to line up the bolt holes and then mounted the CRX seats on the Z rails.  It was definitely much more involved putting them in the tracker.  

Probably wouldn't cost much to get the parts welded up, it was about 24" of linear weld bead in total and it's just mild steel so other than maybe a mig you wouldn't need any fancy welding that would be expensive.

The bigger problem would be that when we were lining up the outer legs between the slider and the seat bottom piece of tubing we had to do a lot of small fitting and then tack the legs in sometimes while putting pressure on the seat since we were using torpedo levels to try and keep the seats as close as possible to level front and back.  

If you have the time and patience you could probably line up the legs and cut them etc then take it in and get it welded up but you may need to do some fine tuning with washer stacks as shims afterwards to level it up if you went that route.

I also got a piece of 1.5" aluminum bar stock that I might make some pucks out of to lift the front of the seat another inch or so because I like the higher front seat cushion feeling. I'm going to have to make a few more notches for the seatback to lean forward further before I do that though since it's already a little too far back for my liking, guess I could also slide it forward a notch or two to compensate but that cuts down on the now ungodly amount of legroom I've now got and I'm liking that part a lot and would hate to have to give it up if at all possible.

I've got some good webspace now courtesy of a friend of mine at his workplace (gotta love knowing the guy that's 100% in charge of the place's webserver) so as soon as I can get a site put together and loaded up there I'll start taking some pics of the mods I'm doing so people can get a better idea of how some of this stuff turns out.  No bandwidth or space restrictions (within reason anyway) so I can get digital camera happy with things.

I look forward to seeing what you've done. I'm sure it will be a big help to a lot of us, including me.

do u have any pics i was thinking about doing the samething in my tracker

pics

4 YEAR OLD THREAD !!!!

4 YEAR OLD THREAD !!!!

hehe, maybe he has pics now 

pics yet???