Customer Question: Fitting Recaro Sportster CS Seats From Another Car Into An Impreza STI
Customer question, Subaru Impreza WRX STI
Cameron took this one on the phone on Tuesday. Chap has a hawkeye STI, the 2006 import, and he has bought a pair of Recaro Sportster CS seats that came out of a Nissan Juke Nismo. He wants the mounts and the rails to put them in, both sides.
Garreth answered the parts bit before Cameron had finished the sentence, because on an Impreza it is the same answer every time. Then they spent ten minutes on the Juke part, which is where these jobs usually come unstuck.
- Planted bracket to the floor, Recaro double locking runner on top of it, then the seat
- Bracket £222.60 a side, runners £166.94 each, so about £779 for a pair before the seats
- Two Planted brackets both cover a hawkeye, so we need the registration to pick one
- The Planted bracket has a space cut for the seat belt buckle
- The seats came out of a Juke, so something underneath them will probably need changing
- Anything electrical in an OEM seat was wired to the donor car, not to your Subaru
What goes under the seat
Three things, in this order, floor upwards. The Planted bracket bolts to the holes Subaru put in the floor. The Recaro runner bolts to the bracket. The seat bolts to the runner.
Garreth has been specifying that stack on Imprezas for years. His reasoning is that it splits the job up: the bracket is the bit that has to know about your Subaru, the runner is the bit that has to know about your seat, and they do not much care about each other. On a seat that came out of a Nissan that is worth something.
| Layer | Part | Price inc VAT |
|---|---|---|
| Onto the Subaru floor | Planted Technology bracket, one a side | £222.60 each |
| On top of the bracket | Recaro double locking sliding runner, one a seat | £166.94 each |
| On top of that | The seats you already own | Nothing to us |
Driver and passenger comes to £779.08 in mounting. The seats are already bought.
The bracket, and a question we have to ask you
Planted do one bracket that covers the Impreza, WRX and STI all the way from 1993 to 2007. Fourteen years on one part, which sounds like a stretch until you know that Subaru barely touched the floor arrangement through the classic shape, the bug eye, the blob eye and the hawk eye. It is listed separately for the driver side and the passenger side, so a pair is two of them.
There is also a second listing, SB019-4927, sold for the second generation cars only. Both of them list the hawk eye.
This is where Cameron always asks for the registration, and it is not us being awkward. Both listings tell you to do it. We would rather spend two minutes checking than have you guess and get the wrong one.
- £222.60 inc VAT a side, part SB019
- Steel, black, bolts to the factory floor points
- Driver side and passenger side are separate listings
- There is a space cut in it for the seat belt buckle
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Why this runner and not a cheaper one
The Planted bracket does not slide. It is a flat base and that is all it is meant to be, so on a road car you need something between it and the seat that moves.
Recaro describe this runner as a standalone slider for adapting a seat to a bracket that has no sliding mechanism of its own, which is more or less a description of what you are doing here. It goes on most of the Impreza conversions we quote.
The double locking part is worth the money. One lever, but it pulls the top and bottom locking points at the same time. Cheap runners latch in one place and that is the one that lets go when somebody stands on the brakes.
- £166.94 inc VAT each, part REC364954
- 220mm of travel
- Built for base mount seats, which is what a Sportster CS is
- The lock is positive and you can hear it go in
Now the bit about the Juke
Buy a Sportster CS from us and we can tell you what it weighs and what it bolts to, because it is a catalogue seat and the numbers are published. Pull one out of a Juke Nismo and you have Recaro’s shell sitting on Nissan’s mounting, and Nissan designed that mounting to suit a Juke floor.
Same seat on top. Possibly a completely different story underneath.
Cameron’s instinct is to get the seats on a bench, put a tape across the bottom and find out in about a minute. Garreth would rather see photographs first, and he is right, because he has had OEM seats turn up with half the donor car’s mounting still bolted to them and the customer none the wiser. Do both and you cannot go wrong.
Tape across the base
Seat upside down. Measure the bolt hole spacing side to side, then front to back. Those two numbers tell us whether the runner bolts straight on or wants a plate in between.
Photograph the underside
Everything Nissan left on there. Rails, brackets, trims, anything welded. Some of it is scrap and some of it is holding the seat together, and it is not always obvious which.
Look for a plug
A loom, a connector, a sensor in the base. If there is one, say so. It was talking to a Juke and it will not be talking to your Subaru.
What we measure yours against
Here is the version of your seat that we sell, and it is useful because it is the yardstick. Base mount on a 405mm by 290mm pattern, about 14.7kg, hybrid shell on a steel frame core, and it reclines properly on both sides.
If the pair in your garage measure the same, the runners bolt to them and this is a quiet afternoon. If they measure something else, that gap is the whole job, and we would sooner find it with a tape than with a drill.
- 405mm x 290mm base pattern on the aftermarket seat
- About 14.7kg
- Hybrid shell built on a steel frame core
- Takes the standard three point belt, and a four point harness
- Recaro fit it as original equipment on a number of performance cars
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What to send us
Registration, so we can settle which of the two brackets your car takes. The bolt spacing off the bottom of one seat. Photographs of the underside and of both seat sides. If the original seats are already out, a picture of the bare floor helps as well.
Five minutes with a tape and a phone and we can tell you whether this is bracket, runner, done, or whether there is a plate to make first. Either way you get a number before you commit to it, which beats finding out halfway through a Saturday.
Common questions
Will they just bolt on?
Might do. We are not going to promise it without seeing them. The bracket is right for your car and the runner is right for a base mount Recaro, and the unknown sitting in the middle is whatever Nissan left on the bottom of your seats.
Why not reuse the rails that came off the Juke?
They are bent to suit a Juke floor and your floor is nothing like it. You would be adapting somebody else’s rails to holes they were never near. The Planted bracket exists so you can bolt to your own car properly and stop worrying about it.
One bracket or two?
Two, and two runners. Driver side and passenger side are separate listings on the bracket, so say you want both when you order or you will get a pair of the same one.
Do I keep the standard seat belt?
Yes. The car keeps its belt and its buckle and the bracket has the space cut for it. Check where the buckle sits with the seat in and somebody sitting on it, before you torque anything down.
Is a slider a problem for scrutineering?
Under an FIA homologated seat, yes, that is a conversation with a scrutineer. The Sportster CS is a road and track seat, not an FIA shell, so on a road going STI it does not come up. Tell us if the car is going to compete and we will go through it properly.
What if the Juke seats turn out to be a nightmare?
Then you sell them on, and they will sell, because people want them. We would put you in something that suits the car without the guesswork. Nobody wants that outcome but it is a lot cheaper to reach it now than with the carpet up.
Send the photos over
Cameron works through two or three of these a week. The parts side is rarely what holds anyone up. What drags it out is ordering before anybody has measured, and then posting things back and forth for a fortnight.
Registration, a tape measure across one seat base, and a few photographs. Ring the showroom on 0115 9893488 or send them over and we will come back with the bracket, the runners, and anything else the job turns out to want.
