Taxi Driver Online

Hi all,

I'm a civvy running a 1997 Fairway as a practical second car; it's a great car and I love it.

I am trying to restore/do up the old girl and have some questions for you about seats. I hope you can help.

1. The driver's seat is pretty worn which I guess must be typical. I'd like something nice in its place and got a quote locally for a couple of hundred to re-upholster the original seat in leather which would be hard wearing and look good of course. Does this sound reasonable? Any other alternatives I haven't thought about?

2. I'd also like to stick a flip up front passenger seat in so the wife can sit next to me! I've seen some very expensive aftermarket kits, but I reckon a standard rear flip up should do the job. Any one have any experience of this or wisdom to share?

Cheers,

RW

Driver seat from a Granada will probably fit.

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Hi,
Occasionally, you see good driver's seats come up on eBay. Also, there is a company that can exchange the seat cushions called Londontaxiparts.com. I'm not sure how good the replacements are. I buy most of my service items from them and have not had a problem with them.
There is another company called London Taxi Exports. They are expensive but they can arrange to have all the interior redone in leather for about £2k!
As regards the front passenger seat, I have fitted a velour tip seat there to match the back seats but you must have a purpose made bracket for it. Occasionally, they come up on eBay. It will involve a bit of drilling and careful measuring. London Taxi Exports charge about £300 for this but you can get one from eBay for about £100. Just be sure to get a seatbelt too.
If you cannot see either seat on eBay, just contact all the taxi part sellers on there. One of them is bound to have what you want. That's how I got my tip seat.
The top seatbelt mounting is a bit tricky because the partition metal is too thin. What I did was remove the bit of plastic trim in the passenger cabin on the top of the B post. Under there, you will find a captave bolt welded to the B post. This is for the seatbelt mount when the car is configured in limousine spec. I then used a bit of 5mm steel about 7"long by 1.5"wide bent in the middle to the same angle as the partition metal. You can then bolt this to the B post and bolt the seatbelt mount through the partition metal to this.
The bottom mount where the seatbelt reel should go I bolted to the floor in the exact same fashion as the drivers seatbelt. The socket for the seatbelt I secured to the tip seat pivot bolt.
The whole thing works well but it means that your passenger will be sat bolt upright, OK for short journeys although I have sat in it for a 2 hour drive with no ill effects and I am 6' tall.
There is a short vid on Youtube of someone fitting one of these seats.
Any other kind of seat will probably not leave enough legroom for your passenger. The older pre-Fairway taxis were better for this because they did not have the doglegged partition for the wheelchairs. But then, they did not have the brilliant Nissan TD27 engine...
I hope this helps!

Hi mate for the drivers seat you can fit a replacement drivers seat from a car a few drivers have had seats from toyota celicas,honda civics,subaru etc and for the passenger side flip seat try and use a tx1 flip seat as it is slightly smaller than the fairway so passenger gets a bit more leg room also i know a lad who can upholster the rear seats etc in any materials and colour you want for a very reasonable price just PM me .

Hi guys,

Thank you very much for the really useful replies. Apologies for the delay in responding - I've only just looked back here and seen the helpful comments. I have in fact managed to progress this issue in the meantime...

I managed to find a tip up seat and fitting kit, including belts etc on ebay and bought it for about £80. I'm having the car serviced by my local mechanic over the weekend and am asking him to do the seat ftting also. I will pass on Gary's helpful tips in this respect.

I also got a local upholster to renovate the driver's seat with a foam skim/bolster rebuild and re-cover in a really nice burgundy leather. He also did the passenger tip up seat (not yet fitted) and is making a bespoke back rest and also covering the centre console lid/arm rest so that the whole thing should look very smart. All in it was £250 for labour and the (genuine) leather, which I thought was a good deal.

Really grateful for the comments - thanks again guys.

RW

sorry for the late reply, but if you had got yourself an ISRI seat we could have made you a complet new seat replacement back and cushion, in leather, for £200 oh and the seat base has extra foam