I just purchased a 1991 XJS 2 seater of which the seats are in disrepair. I'm looking to replace them and was wondering what other years might be interchangeable with the "91. Thanks.p

 

I can't give you an exact answer, but.......

The 1988 and older had the old style seat...I call 'em the "flat seats".

The 1989 and newer had the heavily bolstered "sports" seats.

And it seems to me that the at some point, maybe 93 or so, the sport seats were redesigned with a larger, more squared-off back. I can't swear to that, though.

At some point in the 80s the spacing between the seat tracks was changed...but I think that was during the "flat seat" period.

My guess is that '89-92 would be a safe bet as far as direct interchanabilty goes.

Others will chime in, hopefully with more concrete info

Cheers
DD

 

Thanks for your respnse Doug. I had an idea that may be the case but wasn't 100% sure myself. I will include those years in my search and hopefully get better results. It's certainly not easy finding used seats in good condition.

 

@dewey

I had the same issue with my 92. I spent ages sourcing and going to look at replacement seats but I came to the conclusion that there simply weren't any left. I then took on the job of buying a new set of leather seat covers off ebay and recovered the seats. They look great now, but it was a huge pain to do. I fixed my seat heaters and lumbar bladders at the same time so overall I was very pleased, but it was A LOT of work. However, I learned a lot about the car and the seats when I was doing the work. The covers cost me ~650USD but if I had had them professionally fitted, I dread to think of the final bill.

 

Thanks SARC, I think I'm probably end up ordering the seat covers as well. I'll continue the search for a couple of more months and if I haven't found suitable replacements then I'll go with the leather covers.

 

I am installing a set of 89 sport seats into my 83. A couple of things had to be changed.

The sliders are exactly the same length (13" mounting points), but are mounted 1" closer together on the 89 than on the 83 (16.5" vs 17.5" wide).

The 89 seats have the seat belt buckle attached to the inner seat sliders. The seat mounted buckle will rub the console if mounted directly to the existing inner mount point. You can't just move one side the entire 1" if you want to retain that feature because if you simply make a tab to move the inner mount 1", then the outer side of the driver seat fouls the emergency brake cover.

So I ended up making four 1/4" steel tabs to bolt to the floor on each side of the car, moving the slider mounting points 1/2" further inboard on each side to match the newer seat. I slotted the mounting holes to give me a little wiggle room and threaded the 5/16"-24 holes for the sliders. Since I wanted to keep the seat mounted buckle, I removed the floor mounted 83 buckle and reinstalled the bolt to fill the hole.

The 89 seats have belt retractors mounted on the rails for all the "motor mouse" belts. Not needed with the standard 83 belts, so I removed those along with all the extra belt guides.

I elevated the forward mounts with a 3/8" spacer because they felt better to me; without it I felt like I was sliding forward on the seat.

The new seats have heaters and a power lumbar, but those are not yet hooked up.

 

I'm thinking that pretty much any coup seats will fit; it all depends on how handy you are... you might to fabricate some, but you might save yourself a bunch of $$$.

I'm looking for some gm, ford, even other imports, etc. I just want them to have all the same functions that the stock ones do.

definitely, the closer to stock, the less you'll have to do....


cheers (I like how the british say it ;-) )