Safety first - New seats

Its time to change the seats in the Triumph 2000. Its an issue I’m torn on, but safety first…I’ve started changing the seats on my 2000 today. This is one of those times when I am torn between originality and practicality. I am by no means one of those, “That’s not original, REMOVE IT NOW!” types but that being said, I’m also not one for needlessly changing parts of the car for no good reason.
The reason for this change is that the original seats were starting to sag badly and the only lumbar support really was the manual in the seat pocket but primarily because, I myself am a tall chap and the original seats (headrest and all) only came up to between my shoulder blades. This I consider to be a reasonably serious safety risk should the worst ever happen so the change has been done for this reason.

The seats themselves are the Momo Leather seats fitted as to the Alfa Romeo 156 (coincidentally the model detailed elsewhere on ZD as Project Alfa). Acquiring the seats was a difficult task as I wasn’t willing to spend any real money upon them and the cheapest I could find a pair was at least £100. That was until the penny dropped that Project Alfa had a pair of the exact seats just sitting there, waiting. Suddenly the task was much easier, I grabbed a nice embroidered blue cloth set for £30, dropped them into Project Alfa and subsequently stole the leather away for the 2000.

Having done a great deal of reading prior to the task, I was unclear as to how easy this change would be. I had read that either they would bolt straight in, some said they would need the holes widening and others said that altering the Alfa rails caused more issue than it was worth and that welding the Alfa rails to the Triumph rails was the way to go. Also there was conflicting comments on whether the height and adjusters would work on either rail set. I was lost so I figured I’d just bite the bullet and see what I could figure myself.

To start with, the straight swap notion is not possible. The rails on the Momos are too narrow and no holes on the seats themselves line up with the Triumph rails.

Modification will be needed. That will follow in part two…