Looking for some help with a driver seat upgrade. I love my element and can’t drive it anymore due to a spine injury. The seats are SO bad for the back. My goal is to find a high quality ergonomic post market drivers seat with top notch lumbar support and mount it on the brackets in the element. I know this will require some modifications to the brackets. Looking to crowd source info from anybody who’s done such a project. Also open to hiring help if I can find a trusty expert.
I am not sure what seat that would be good for your back. why not go to a vehicle upholstery shop. they can customize your seat, so it is comfortable for you.
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No idea of the cost but race car drivers are doing Expanding Foam Seat, I’m sure a custom upholstery shop could use it and the process be modified to work with your OEM seat frame and around the SRS, you just cut off what is not used… Of course it would be for you only to sit in it… So if you decided to sell the vehicle down the road you might have to put a stock seat back in it, so might be better to start with a doner seat to keep yours stock…
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If the OP’s Element has side airbags that are located in the side of the seatback, replacing the seat will likely result in no longer having that type of side-impact protection. Even if a replacement seat has side airbags, it might not be possible to “mate” them to the car’s electronic sensors.
As was already suggested, modifying the existing seat might be your best bet if you don’t want to buy a newer car. And, if you do buy a newer car, be sure to take an extended test drive in it because you can’t necessarily judge seat comfort with the typical 10-15 minute test drive.
Surf over to the Summit Racing website, they might offer some products for this purpose.
hmmm … If I had that problem myself, rather than fiddling with the existing seat, I’d probably just buy a different car that had a seat feel I liked. Seats are part of the car’s safety system, so any modifications made might not be 100% safe.
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