Picked up an unused spotcleaner for $40 off of kijiji, came with pretty much everything but the box, including the small sized bottle of cleaner.
The cleaner seemed to work fairly well though it seems the water didn't get very hot, I think it might have to be run pretty much constantly wide open to generate the full heat. I'll have to try a different technique next time to see if I can get the heat going. Overall for $40 money well spent, not to mention if I ever spill anything on my carpet it will pay for itself instantly then. The cell phone pictures as usual don't give the difference much justice. But it pulled quite a good amount of sludge and human goop off of the seat. I'll probably hit it again once the seat fully drys, the cleaning formula apparently also works over time so I might pull up even more crap.
Still debating how I want to go about making the adapter plate. Seeing as other people want to do this I have to make it be done with reasonably accessible tools so making it out of steel is less of an option. The one thing I know for sure so far that I will need is either some threaded rod or some long bolts I can cut the heads off of. All the seat mounts to the rail are straight on the bottom of the seat itself (on my wrx passenger seat anyway).
I might go for flat bar that has the holes in it at Canadian tire and make an # shape with it to line up the seat mounting points and the base mounting points. The trick with that idea is if the holes don't line up or have enough play in them to join the crossbars together then the connection would have to either be welded or ghetto rigged somehow, which makes the plan less ideal. Looking at how the arms are mounted to the seat itself and not the base makes it look like this plan might not work as the flat bar with the holes in it I doubt are stiff enough to support the arms.
Another option is the standard flat piece of plywood with both bolt patterns of the seat and base drilled into it. However wood is generally less durable, and if its visible it could look rather shoddy.
As far as the hardware goes I can thread in the rod and use it like a stud to be able to set the distance between the seat and the adapter plate easily just by moving a nut that will act as a stopper. This also gives me the distance I need away from the bottom of the seat itself as the mounts are recessed a bit into the frame of the seat. It also gives me the option to give the seat a bit of natural tilt by lengthening the front studs and shortening the rear etc etc. It will also make it easier to install on the adapter plate as it will save trying to jam bolts through holes and try to get it to thread into the seat.
Also looking at the wiring underneath the seat I'm starting to suspect it might in fact be heated, which could lead to an interesting mod after its assembled.
