Gustav finally got seats

[Squatch Pads]

For those of you who know...I've had quite the battle with seats. There is a much long story. After a year and a half I am proud to say that Gustav now has seats.

[Mike_B]

Nice looking seats. GTS Monte Carlo's?

[Squatch Pads]

Ding..ding...ding...Mike gets the prize. You know your seats. But....they are not just out of the box seats from Stefan. I had a local upholstery shop spend about 6 hours customizing to my liking and fit.

[jrkoupe]

...nice choice.....

show us the bracketry you fabbed up........c'mon.

[Squatch Pads]

So long ago when I was stripping the inside of the car I just cut out the stock mounting points for the seats. I didn't like how high they were and wanted something a little beefier. I'm only 220 and the rear of the stock brackets were bending back. So we welded in new mounting points using a set of Recaro's ( my original plan for seats) to position. Here is a picture of the brackets. I know not that great of just the brackets, but what I have.

What I didn't take pictures of was the cross brackets I fabricated. Too much into the heat of the moment between the saw, grinder, drill press and paint gun. The sliders on the GTS seats were narrower than the Recaro slider position. So we added two 2" cross flat steel pieces to mount the seats to the in car brackets. Postioned the seats so that someone 5' or 6'7 could drive the car. Installed using stainless hardware for strength and now we just have a little trimming of the carpet set to finish it out. Really a pretty slick design. The in car brackets are slightly angled so for shorter drivers when moving the seat up it slightly raises the seat.

[peteinjp]

Good choice! I love the look of those. How would you characterize the quality of the GTS seats. I'm thinking christmas present to myself.....

pete

[fast2002]

am interested in your view of the rear calipers and were they a problem to install any pics. do you have any more pics of the seat bracket and how you fab it? Thanks

[mtriple]

Very Very Nice set of seats. I am getting ready to start my adventure. I am leaning towards bucket seats of some sort and the recaros will be my last resort. Kudos to you for trying something different.

hamada

[Squatch Pads]

Pete,

Good choice! I love the look of those. How would you characterize the quality of the GTS seats. I'm thinking christmas present to myself.....

Well it took a while to get the seats. Stefan had lost two of his helpers and thus the order took about 6 weeks longer than he had projected.

Overall quality of the seats are good. I'm really really picky. Something I get from my father. So naturally I found things to my dislike. But remember what I may dislike may not bother others.

Packaging was awesome. Material was nice and the design matched perfectly to what I had ordered. I had him custom match the material and pattern of my rear seats from pictures and measurements I gave him. The material I chose was the German Leatherette with the center being perforated This has the grains in it like leather. I wanted leather but since the majority of my interior minus the dash was German vinyl, I just chose to keep them the same.

However, upon inspection I noticed that bolsters near the shoulder area had wrinkles and were not quite either pulled or stuffed right and the lumbar support pillow that I had Stefan install was a little high for my back. And lastly the lower part of the back of the seat had to much foam. I contacted Stefan and he said that he would look into it and make up for anything I had to fix to save from shipping and the expense.

I dropped the seats off at my local upholstery shop and had them fix the back of the seats. The moved the lumbar pillow and removed 2" of foam and rebuilt the back of the seat with a little more supportive foam and adjusted the frame slightly to allow my back to fall back into the seat and be held by the bolsters.

Told you I am picky.

I chose the Monte Carlo design because they look period for the car, allow access to the rear seat for those rare moments that someone dare sit in my back seat. Plus they tilt back.

The frame looks good, and the seat rails provided were nice.

In the end they look nicer than a lot of seats I have seen in 02's plus a little different.

In the end I am happy and they are dang comfortable to me.

Stefan is a very nice gentlemen to deal and work with. I think he just had few bumps.

[Squatch Pads]

am interested in your view of the rear calipers and were they a problem to install any pics. do you have any more pics of the seat bracket and how you fab it? Thanks

Pictures of the rear caliper should be on the project blog. Just look at the end of my avatar for the link. If there isn't one there that is detailed enough, I'll have to look. I've got to get itback up on the lift and will be adjusting the e brake anyway, so I'll take some more detailed ones. And one thing that I have learned with this project. Nothing, and I mean nothing is just "bolt on'. We had to fabcricate the bracket for the calipers to fit and bolt on. Not just mine, but two of my friends with the same kit. Funny though, each a little different.

Don't have any pictures of the seat brackets I made. But I gave a pretty good description up above. At least it makes sense to me, but then again, it's me.

[jgmgti]

Woody,

I have some GTS Montes from Stefan as well.I had mine done with the basket-weave inserts and had custom rear pockets sewn in for some storage.

Quality wise,grade B-. good but not built like a factory Recaro or a Scheel .

Just my opinion.Also his prices are up $200+ per seat over 1.5 years ago.

I.E.good for $500 not 725+.

Jonathan