Transfering seats and cards between 5 door to 3 door?

[Ben Lessani]

Hi,

I'm getting some 5 door leathers (cards and seats) for my MK2, but if you might have noticed my car is a 3DR. I was wondering if its going to be a big problem to transfer them over, or if its possible. I can't seem to find any posts which confirm whether they'll fit or not (infact, searching found posts of me asking, lol).

I know the 3 doors recline to let people in the back seats, whereas the 5 doors don't.
Are the 5 door door cards all a different size, or are the fronts the same size, or what? I need to know how much hacking I will be doing to get them to fit.

Ben

[Thom89]

If the front door cards do fit, the backs certainly wont! plus the seat problems as you mention, hardly seems worth it!... Id'd wait for the proper gear to turn up..
Tom

[Ben Lessani]

When you're talking £170 for a full set of creme leathers....you don't turn it away!

[tinman]

When you're talking £170 for a full set of creme leathers....you don't turn it away!

ok, i've had a bottle of wine. i might be blunt.

you have a 3 dr and are wondering if 5 dr interior will fit?

door cards won't, and if you fit the front seats you will fail your next MOT. front seats on a 3dr must recline forward otherwise it'll fail.

[Breaker]

They must recline?
Never knew that.

There is a way to make 5 door seats recline forwards.
its to do with the back of the seat where the brackets are at the bottom.
they wont have a handle but they will go down

3 door, doors are longer and the rears definatly won't fit

[rubjonny]

There is nothing in the MOT test about checking the front seats tilt, though it will fail if there are back seats and the tester cant get in to check the belts.  Remove the passenger seat, or rear seat & belts and you'll be fine.
To get the seats working, strip the cables & levers off a set of 3 door seats, and fit to the 5 door seats, job done.  You can recline 5 door seats by hand, look at the back at the bottom, there are 2 hooks, lift up and the seat will tilt.

[Ben Lessani]

Right thats cool, so the fronts will drop in - I'm pretty sure the rears, even though there is a split should fit in using the other mounts in the car. The door cards would probably be the biggest issue because I think the doors are different sizes! But I might see if I can get somewhere to re trim my cards in the same style, you never know, I might find a way to make them fit.

After the seats drop in, I think I'm going to look into a dash conversion, not sure which car yet though, need to go to a scrapyard and start taking measurements.

[rubjonny]

yeah the split fold rear bench will use the extra mounting points in the middle, under that black plastic trim.
The fronts will never fit, the door is much shorter, and the rear is a totally different shape, and would look like arse since the doorcard has holes for the window winder & door pull/handle etc

[Ben Lessani]

I'm still picking them up .... but I might just buy a set of black leather 3 dr door cards. Last time I had something re trimmed it cost me a fortune, but can at least still look into it - car would look a million times smarter

[tinman]

There is nothing in the MOT test about checking the front seats tilt, though it will fail if there are back seats and the tester cant get in to check the belts.  Remove the passenger seat, or rear seat & belts and you'll be fine.

my 16v failed many years ago for not tilting forward. the mechanism was shot, and it failed because in the event of an accident, rear passengers would not be able to exit the car easily.

whether there are exceptions to that i have no idea.