How To Fit F21 Seats Into E36 Compact [BMW E36 Seat Swap Guide] 140i Seat Upgrade for 318ti | 004

The BMW E36 318ti Compact I bought on a whim from eBay is a little tired, but the seats seemed more tired than the rest of it.

Links to items used in this video:-
Seat Belt Buckle Stopper Buttons: https://ebay.us/y26kz0
Front seat belt for buckle: https://ebay.us/NtlAZz
Solder Sleeve Red 50 pack: https://ebay.us/8jH76F

The driver's seat in my E36 Compact is quite worn, and besides the usual bolster wear where the driver gets in and out, it also has a couple of splits in the leather on the seat base, along with some parted seams. I also think the lining is quite compressed so it isn’t that comfortable to sit on.

I started looking around for replacement seats, and at first I was steering towards the thought of getting seats from a higher spec, better condition E36 or maybe fitting bucket seats. I also flirted with buying Recaro seats, but the cost did seem prohibitive. I then came across the idea of fitting seats from a later BMW into my Compact.

The biggest problem might be that they may be too big, as cars have grown in size since the E36 compact was built. However whilst looking around I came across seats from the 1 series that looked like they should fit a treat.

Before long I came across some seats from an F21 140i, they are sports seats with manual adjustment. I got them from within 50 miles of my home, and they only cost £180. The previous owner had changed the seats in his car for ones with blue stitching to suit the colour of his car, so they weren’t even from a crash damaged car.

When I initially test fitted them, I could see that the inner rail sat in exactly the right position, but the holes for the mounting were just a little bit too far apart. However the outer rail sat about 3 cm further into the car than the original E36 seat rail, so I would need to make some custom brackets to make them fit. In the event the brackets were simple to make with holes 35mm apart to fit perfectly, and the holes on the inner rail could be easily adjusted with the use of a round file.

Now that I had the seats so that they would fit the next problem was to work out how to get a working seat belt. I originally intended to swap the E36 buckle onto the F21 seat, but the mountings were completely different. So my next option was to get an F21 lap belt to see if I could replace the E36 one, however the mounting for that was quite different as well. I then hit upon the idea of fitting the latch part of the F21 seat belt onto the E36 strap. It took a bit of doing but when I eased the slot in the plastic cover of the latch with a soldering iron so that the E36 belt would fit through it went on fine.
My next concern was wiring up the pretensioner. As this is an explosive device I was concerned that I might set it off accidentally. After some research it appears that the pretensioners on the old and the new seats work in the same way so I could graft the connector from the old one onto the new one and it worked fine.

Having completed the job, I find that the seat is in the right place for me with regard to the steering wheel and foot pedals, so the comfort in use is great. The seat is much more modern, so is more comfortable and provided better support. There were some electrical parts of the seat that I didn’t use, but I am hoping that I may be able to get the heated seats to work. Although I don’t really intend to use the car in Winter, it would be nice to have the option.

For more helpful how-to guides and restoration project logs, visit our blog: https://www.spannerrash.com/

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