Technical Panda seat swap question

[NigelO]

I’ve seen several threads about fitting 500 seats into a Panda (with a bit of fettling on one mount?)

My Panda seats are a bit knackered, so I’m thinking of doing the swap. However, from what I can see, there was a change to the 500 mounts at some point, so I’m worried that some 500 seats may not fit at all.

I have my eye on two types - can anyone confirm if these will / won’t fit?

 

[koalar]

Straight up I don't know for sure


The electrical connect on the 500 seats, heater and airbags are different and changed around 2012


As far as I know the physical frames haven't altered, so will require modification


Don't forget you need all the catches and latches if you are swapping the rears also

 

[NigelO]

Thanks - I’m collecting the blue-stripe seats tomorrow. I’m fairly handy with a bit of DIY, so I shouldn’t have too much hassle swapping rails or fabricating a bracket. I’ve made sure that I’m also getting all the rear seat brackets and the cross-bar (my 4x4 doesn’t have a split back seat)

Hopefully these will make longer trips a bit more tolerable - the current seats get quite uncomfortable after a couple of hours

 

[NigelO]

Well, that wasn’t very hard…

Three of the four mounting points on the 500 seats are identical to the Panda. One is completely the wrong orientation. It’s simply a case of drilling out the rivets and swapping the Panda bracket onto the 500 seat rail.

Both front seats done in three hours

Panda bracket - holes part-drilled



500 bracket-



The end rivet on the 500 bracket is impossible to reach with a drill bit, so I jacket it off-



Then drilled out the rivets-



Brackets removed-



Panda bracket bolted to the 500 rail with 2x M8 Allen bolts and Nyloc nuts-



And in the car…



The difference is night and day - much more comfortable and loads more support. They look loads better

 

[NigelO]

Rears are in too - bit of a faff, as the seat base is quite different to the panda base, so there was a sizeable gap between the base and the seat back.



However, I got inventive with some box-section aluminium and raised the back of the seat base, so the gap isn’t really noticeable now.

 

[NigelO]

Just spotted an unfortunate auto-correct typo in my post from yesterday… would a kind Mod please replace ‘jacket’ with ‘hacked’?

Bloody iPad…

 

[Quantum Fireball]

I'm considering changing the front seats on my Panda (2010 1.1 Active) with either something from a 500 or Panda 319. Did anyone work out if they do become completely incompatible at some point in production? And are the above seats from an Abarth?

 

[koalar]

They always fit
They always need modification
Both arbarth and none arbarth have been fitted

Later seats have a different airbag connector, which normally of no concern in most pandas