The 'E' Type Forum

There is a more plentiful supply of black leather seats that would not need recovering than MX5 Mk1 seats. Has anybody fitted these to their car. If so, how difficult is it? Any help/guidance appreciated. Many thanks.

I have fitted these.
How easy it is depends on whether you want them to slide or not.
I need the maximum leg room as a driver so I just bolted them in as far back as possible.
Not bothered about the passenger being able to slide, so I fitted them in a fixed position too.
Then its easy,
The MGF seat base lifts out, so you can put the baseless seat in to do you measurements.
I think all it needed was 4 flat plates of steel per seat, drilled in the correct locations.
Then once fitted the base slides back into position.
The red leather ones are a dead ringer for Jaguar red leather too.
The seat base fitted between the cross-member and the rear bulkhead nicely.
Here they are in a car close to being finished.

Many thanks for that and the photos. They certainly look as though they belong. As you say, the colour match is excellent.

Thanks.
Yes, they are great apart from no adjustment. Not a problem for me, but could be for someone a bit shorter.
At 6ft a SWB E type Coupe is about on the limit of adjustment for me anyway-as a car!
I find the roadsters much easier to get in and out of (with the roof down).
I completely removed the sliders to get the seat base as low as possible too.
Thats the only way I could avoid hitting by head on the ceiling and squeezing by legs between the steering wheel and the seat.
Doing it like that made it nice and easy to do though as you can see the floor of the car with the seat in place and the base removed for measurements. There is definitely very little wiggle room once you lift the seat into position.
I think I paid £50 for a pair of low mileage red seats. The guy I bought them from couldn't believe where they were heading.
It would have been in the region of £3k to find and fit a pair of S1 4.2 recliners. Mine were too far gone.
New seat covers alone are now around £900 a pair. Foams, clips and diaphragms another £500. Seat frames are hard to come by and sliders (which I never use) another £250 for 2 pairs.
The MGF seats are excellent for me. Very comfortable.
Not sure I would want to change them now even though its reversible.

Thanks for posting your experience!
I agree with your conclusions re the cost of refurb the originals Vrs MX5 etc.
I've been stalking thus solution for a couple of years now and more recently picked up the idea again. I've sat in a couple of MG's to get an idea, but not compared the physical size to the MX5 seat, you intimate they might be larger, thus impacting a potential seat sliding rail possibilities. Is this the case?
Would you have persued/ thought it possible if you didn't Need the max extension?
Regards,

Michael

Michael,
I think you could engineer sliders with the MGTF seats.
The problem for me was that MG seat is relatively tall, so clearance was too tight to get your legs in between the wheel and the seat base.
It dropped into the hole very nicely once the sliders were removed and fitted me perfectly with no adjustment.
My guess is that anyone who is on the short side might need an alternative solution.
My guess is that you have to be 5ft 9' or taller!
There are also a few different seat designs in the MGF.
The one I have is the pleated early style. The others might look slightly out of place.
Trophy cars near Grantham on the A1 have over 80 MGFs in stock of all ages and seem to have many parts too.
I suspect the UK may be the best source to buy a pair.
Mine were £45 each from Ebay 5 years ago!!. I was lucky.
The problem with early E type seats is that if you are starting from scratch, by the time you factor in frames, covers, padding, sliders, clips and hardware you are looking at about £3,000. This and 3.8 seats dont recline and you have to be thin to get in them.
Postage aside, you dont have much to lose if it all goes wrong with the MG option..
I am happy to be a UK postal address for you if you get a "UK only"postage bargain, PM me.