Lighter civic seats?

[ratherbehiking]

Just bought a 91 civic hatchback to my commute and the seats are in bad shape. Im definitly going to be replacing the 2 front seats, anyone know of any lighter seats from say another year/model civic?

[Ryland]

I haven't heard of any civic seats that swap from body style to body style but how they bolt in it's easy to make new mounts for different civic seats, Honda Insight seats bolt in the same way as well, but all of their bolt spacing is different so go to a hard ware store and by some flat steel bar stock and drill holes so it bolts to the floor of the car and drill holes in it to bolt the seat to.

[drmiller100]

you are not going to find much lighter then the seats you have.

all civic seats from same model group years swap back and forth.

[Christ]

No, they don't. 88 and 89 swap, 90 and 91 swap. The rails are different for two sub gens.

You can get seats from a CRX HF in '90 and '91. They're not much lighter, but maybe a pound or so.

IF you want to just recover the seats you have, look at the frames minus the covers and foam, and see if there's any material you can remove.

If you don't need to adjust your driver's seat after you've set it for yourself, remove the sliders and make aluminum tabs to mount the seat to the floor. The sliders weigh a couple pounds themselves. You can also remove the seat-back linkage and hard mount the seat back to the pan frame.

The seat bottom pans are close to solid pieces. You can remove a LOT of material from there without making it weak. The seat does nothing for a frontal impact. The shape of the seat helps prevent intrusion from a side impact, but not as much as the door beams and rockers do. The seat pan doesn't really help with a rear impact, as most of your weight will transfer to the seat back. Adding solid mounts between the seat back and bottom will help to keep them from separating and remove additional weight.

The other option is to find a comfortable "racing" (sport) seat and install it on a fixed mount. They generally weigh less than 10lbs for the seat.

[Christ]

There are "offroad" seats called "Suspension seats" also... they're a tube frame with mesh in them for the seat material. Very comfortable, very light, not sure on the price.

[ratherbehiking]

Thanks for all the replies. I figured I couldn't get much lighter but I figured since I will be replacing/fixing the existing seats I might as well ask and see what my options are. I knew there were definitely some civic experts here that would know.

[fusion210]

It would seem most of the weight to be saved is in the brackets for the seats. A fellow neon owner made aluminum brackets for his factory seats and shaved off a bit of weight.

www.neons.org • View topic - 20lbs off stock seats for $35

I did a bit of research into lighter seats and found that even when you do get a light aftermarket seat, the brackets just bring the weight up.

[Christ]

Originally Posted by fusion210

It would seem most of the weight to be saved is in the brackets for the seats. A fellow neon owner made aluminum brackets for his factory seats and shaved off a bit of weight.

www.neons.org • View topic - 20lbs off stock seats for $35

I did a bit of research into lighter seats and found that even when you do get a light aftermarket seat, the brackets just bring the weight up.

Thats why I say to get rid of the sliders for aluminum tabs.

Fortunately, the sliders on CIVIC seats in this gen aren't all that heavy. 2-3lbs per side max.

Another thing you can do is cut the entirety of the seat pan out, leaving only the frame ans attachment points, then put couch springs across the gap to hold the foam in.

[GRU]

the weight difference will be very small. even if you take off 10 lbs that's not going to help much with fuel economy.