Suzuki Alto Works – Seat Lowering

I’ve been thinking about these for a while, even before I got an Alto, as they are a common mod in Japan. I finally bit the bullet and lowered the front seats.

One of the biggest criticisms of the Alto in reviews is that instead of sitting IN the Alto, you sit ON the Alto. The two front seats, despite being nice fancy Recaros, are not height adjustable (lower spec Altos, including the RS Turbo, are) and you sit very high in the car.

For example, I’m not particularly tall and my shoulder in the standard seats, is about halfway up the window

The other issue was that on the track I had to slightly slouch in the seat for my helmet to clear the headlining. Not ideal.

Knowing I want to track the car more, and that slouching in the seat wasn’t safe, I convinced myself it was a safety upgrade to lower the seats and gain more headroom. Yes. Safety.

So I went on Yahoo Japan and bought a pair of TakeOff Low-Posi Kun seat spacers. These emulate the standard spacers by being one piece with a crossbar between the two legs

There are other brands, some of which offer adjustable spacers so you can change the height or the tilt of the seat to suit you, but the TakeOff ones are the only spacers to have the crossbar. I’ve seen what can happen to Recaro seats when the two rails aren’t braced together, and the seat tries to splay them apart. I’m not a small or light person, certainly not the build of person the Alto was designed for, so strength is important.

The TakeOff spacers have also been strength tested in Japan and each set comes with an individually serialised certificate of strength testing. It won’t mean much in NZ, but it gives me some confidence that the product is good.

The TakeOff spacer lowers the seats by 50mm. It doesn’t sound like much, but when you put the two spacers side by side it’s huge. The top one is the standard spacer, and the black one is the lowered spacer.

When put side by side, it’s noticeable, as the example photos from the site show

A wad of money, and a few days later, I had a pair of spacers in my hands

They’re a nicely made piece of kit. Very solid.

The included strength certificate

It comes with all the fittings needed, if they aren’t the standard fittings (it reuses all standard fittings)

The thick brass washers are optional spacers to raise the seat slightly. It also makes the rails smoother to adjust. I’m not bothered either way and wanted to go as low as possible, so I left them out

I had seen a few different ways to fit the spacers. The most common is to just remove the seats from the car completely, but I didn’t want to remove the seats from the car and get them dirty in the garage, so I opted to tip the seats back up onto the folded-down back seat and work on them there

The seats are bolted to the car with 4x T40 bolts. You can see the large fabric covered stock spacer here, between the rail and seat.

Don’t forget to unplug the connector under the seat. These seats don’t have side airbags, so I didn’t bother disconnecting the battery. This is just the seatbelt and passenger occupancy connector.

I unbolted the seat and carefully tipped it back onto the back seat. I turned it so I could work from the back door opening

Disconnect the plug and unhook the wiring from the spacer and rail

The spacer is then bolted to the seat with 4 bolts (orange arrows) and 7 studs with nuts from the rails below them (green arrows, one side of the rail has an extra stud; 3 on one side and 4 on the other). All are 12mm.

I loosened all nuts and bolts before removing any of them. Don’t forget to undo the large 14mm securing the seatbelt buckle on the side too.

The rail comes off as one piece

Leaving the spacer

Remove the four bolts holding that on and you have a bare seat. You will need to unhook the fabric from each end of the spacer, I used a trim tool to lever it towards the middle of the seat and unhook it from the metal lip.

I then affixed the TakeOff spacer to the standard rails, using supplied washers and the original nuts. Protip, don’t mount the buckle yet, it has to go through the fabric on the seat first, so wait until the rail is mounted.

Then it was a case of mounting the rails to the seats. The holes are slotted, so I put two bolts on one side of the seat and slid the rail onto those to support it while I put the other two in. There is enough space to slip the seatbelt wiring between the spacer and the seat base.

I tightened all the nuts and bolts down and fit the buckle on the side. Once the wiring was clipped and tied in place, the seat was then lowered back down onto the floor, using the locating studs to place it. The bolts were then tightened down.

The visual difference was immediate

It’s significantly lower than the stock driver’s seat. I couldn’t help myself so jumped in and sat on the newly lowered passenger seat, which made me even more keen to get the driver’s side done next.

I followed the same procedure, which went quicker this time now that I knew what I was doing, and had the driver’s seat installed in no time.

Tons of head space now. No chance of helmet issues next time I take it to the track.

The little fabric flap now just hangs aimlessly down covering everything. It’s not attached anymore, but I’m sure if it bothered you you could glue or velcro it to the spacer to hold it in place. I’ve seen people cut the fabric or jam it between the spacer and seat base, but I’m happy with it as it is.

I’ve only taken it for a short drive so far, I’m planning on taking it to work tomorrow anyway, but already the differences are pretty big. Obviously, I’ve had to adjust all my mirrors and steering wheel down (speaking of, the steering wheel is now at its lowest position, so I can see why column spacers exist), but the biggest thing for me is that now I’m looking through the middle of the windscreen, not the top half, and the interior mirror no longer blocks a chunk of my left-hand vision.

In terms of driving, the seats feel more comfortable, maybe due to my leg position now, and the car feels a bit more confident in corners. I guess lowering a significant percentage of the cars weight (me) will help that by lowering the center of gravity. It really does feel like you’re IN the car now.

The only downsides so far are that it’s harder to do the old arm-out-the-window when driving, as my shoulder is now just above the waist line of the door, and I’ve hit my elbow on the armrest on the door when turning once or twice since I’m not used to there being something there.

I’m looking forward to my drive to work tomorrow and seeing how it goes around the twisty roads.

Update –

So, my somewhat educated opinion on the lowering rails after driving it a few times to and from work; They’re awesome.

I genuinely feel like this is how the car should’ve been when it was sold new and the big spacers that were fitted were an afterthought. The lowering rails bring all the controls right to the drivers hand, and forward visibility is much improved. On top of that, the car feels faster in corners because it feels flatter (whether it is or not) and it’s easier to hold yourself in the seat. As another Alto owner commented, “it’s like sitting in the car, not on a milk crate”.

It might sound silly, but one of the biggest differences for me is that I can now easily reach all the HVAC controls from my seat, without having to lean forward and reach down.

The downside is that the rear quarter visibility is worse, because visibility is blocked by the seats and the shape of the rear doors. It’s not a dealbreaker though, you just need to be more careful and check those blind spots thoroughly.