After swapping seat frames, I’m now confused about the commonly shared knowledge that manual seats sit lower than powered.
I bought a 128i about a year ago and in addition to the LSD and 3.73 I put in over the summer, I’ve been on an endless search for a set of manual sport seats. I was looking for them because of all the threads on here saying they sit lower than the powered seats by 1-2”. I’m 6’1”, long torso, and have about a finger’s width between my head and the (sunroof 😒
headliner. This is fine for the street but means I have to open the sunroof shade and stick my head in there with a helmet on at the track. This fall I found a set of base manual sets locally and set about combining the bits I wanted to keep.
First the good news. My powered seat weighed 63.2lbs, and the base manual seat was 50.2lbs. I didn’t weigh the final seat before putting it in the car but I’d guess 10lbs saved since I took the seat heating, bolster bladders, and ecu over to the manual seat.
Now the bad news: I didn’t gain a shred of head room. Am I missing something? If someone with manual sport seats could take a simple reference measurement near the driver’s hip I’d appreciate it. I wonder if base manual frames are different than sport manual frames because I definitely lost some rake to the seat bottom as well. According to realOEM there is only one manual seat part part number so maybe not.
It’s looking like I might have to go aftermarket to get the seat position I want. The struggle there is finding one that my boys can still climb past because this is a weekend car also.
Thanks in advance.