So now that ive gone off-road life and picked up my 09 Forester, I decided to get a set of leather (XT) seats out of an SG foz.
Obviously the seat rails are different, so basically my question is, how difficult is it to swap seat bases?
Is it as simple as just swapping the rails? Or am I looking at some custom fabrication?

I assume it's essentially the same as swapping GD seats into the newer bettys (if anyone has any experience with that)

Ive done it the other way around. I had GR/GV sti limited leather seats into my SG forester. The conversion is pretty easy. What you need to do is remove just the rear feet from the seats, and then weld on the correct feet from your model. The rear mounting feet are held on with big steel rivets. You need to grind these off / drill em out etc. There may also be a small spot weld or similar aswell. Just remove the 2 rear feet from the rail as neately as you can. And also do the same to your original seats so you can salvage those feet for re-use. Then all you have to do is weld the feet onto the rails and give it a quick paint. The front feet match up, its just the rear dont.

The SRS connection will probs be different. So you will need to find a way to join the wiring. When i did it, i cut my plugs off my standard seats and then put a 2 pin deutsch plug in place of the join. I did the same with the new seats. That way i could simply plug and play whichever SRS connector i wanted in. There is no guarantee the airbags will work in a crash. The only way to test, will destroy the seats if its succesfull. But it does make the SRS warning light go out which is a good indication the system will work.

And lastly, you will probably need to reuse the seatbelt buckle from your original seats. These are a simple bolt over job. Although i think early models you may need to grind a little tab that keeps the seatbelt upright. Youll figure it out.

__________________
Doing it for all the wagons out there

With the swapping of seat feet on a forester to impreza seat swap and vice versa. It is important to match the feet to the equivalent model. This is because forester seats actually have a little longer feet than impreza.

So if for example you wanted to put late model impreza seats in early model forester. You need to get early model Impreza rear feet for the seats. If you reused your forester ones, rhey would be a bit taller than the front feet of the new seat. So instead you get early model inpreza rear feet so you can keep the seat hieght correct. Or swap all 4 feet. This only applies with impreza seats to forester or forester seats to inpreza.

__________________
Doing it for all the wagons out there

Wow......
Thank you for the very in depth explanation!
Much appreciated

By the sounds of it this is well beyond my experience levels unfortunately.
I'm gonna guess nowhere would do it for you either due to liability issues and what not

Do the rails just un-bolt from the bottom of the seat four bolts.

I believe they can if they are manual adjustmemt. But doing this and you end up with the plastic trims not lining up perfectly and problems if the seats have the adjusters in a different location etc if you try and swap the trims aswell.

My method above is a bit of extra mucking around with the weld. But it works perfectly.

__________________
Doing it for all the wagons out there

Dam I thought it would be a pretty straight forward swap
Oh well
Who wants them haha
$150 and they're yours

Your doing it for offroad arent you? If ywanna cut the legs off, ill put a bead of weld on for you.

__________________
Doing it for all the wagons out there

Yep modifying it for off-road but it's still my daily, just gonna sell the seats and keep an eye out for some newer seats
Thanks for the help and advice though Bram!
Much appreciated!