Jetta Recaros in my 4kq...

[George Nimmer]

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I've been trying to find out if the Recaro's from an early '90's Jetta
GLI will fit into my 4kq.  Having found no BTDT's, I took as many
measurements as I could of my 4kq seat tracks and of the seats in a
friend's Jetta (which doesn't have the Recaros).

Having measured everything and found them to be "pretty darn close", I
took the plunge and ordered a pair of Recaros from Chris at Force5.

The driver's side seat is now installed, I'm pleased to say.  It was not
as straight forward as I had hoped though...  There were some "minor"
issues.  To begin with, I had to swap the seatbelt receiving ends from
my original seats.  The ones on the Recaros were of the type that had a
seperate lap belt and shoulder belt (two independant belts).  The second
issue, which was more of a PITA, was that the two feet (which ride in
the tracks on the floor) were designed for tracks that sat about 1/2
inch wider apart.  Bummer.  To resolve this, I unbolted the subframe
from the Recaros (six 6mm allen head bolts) and used a BFH to bend the
feet inward about 1/4 inch on each side.  Not the most elegant solution
to the problem, but it worked.  The final issue is with the height
adjust on the seat.  It is manual on the original 4kq seats, but is
electric on the Recaros.  I do plan to wire them up (someday) but until
then, I needed the seat to sit at the correct height for me.  This was
accomplished by removing the height adjust motor (three 5mm allen head
bolts) and using vice grips to manually turn the "drive shaft" which
goes into the adjuster.  Worked like a champ, but took a bit of trial
and error (and test fitting) to get it to just the right height for
me.   The sliding forward-backward seat adjustment is manual (not
electric), and mates perfectly with the center track in the car - no
mods needed.

After vacuuming the carpet (hey - when's the last time you cleaned under
your seats??) and cleaning/regreasing the tracks, I'm pleased to say
that the seat just slid right in.  So for the record, the Recaro's from
an '89 Jetta GLI do fit into a 4kq, but they need a bit of
"convincing".  ;-)

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George Nimmer <george164(at)earthlink.net>
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