My apologies if this is old news, I didn't get anything out of the search regarding this particular swap.

The driver's seat in my '84 240 needed rebuilding, the steel wires that connect the support springs are all broken, and the foam has collapsed, so that the driver's butt rides basically on the floor. Also the lumbar support has failed, and the frame is a bit loose, so I was looking for swap options.

I'm also into BMW 2002s, and a popular swap for that car is to take the Recaro sport seats found in the early '80s 320is, change the slider rails, and bolt them into the 02. An '02 friend had a set of such Recaros, the driver's side needed some upholstery work, but the passenger's side was fine. Given that my 240 is a 4-door, and so I won't require easy access to the seat back flip lever, I decided to try installing the passenger Recaro in place of my Volvo driver's seat.

The Recaro BMW setup includes a pair of steel brackets that bolt to the bottom of the seat, which in turn are bolted to the slider rails on a 320 or 2002. I found that by turning the brackets around, they matched up OK with the bottom part of the 240 slider, the part that the front/back tilt mechanism bolts to. Without turning them around, the bracket spacing is wider than the Volvo slider spacing. About 30mins was spent drilling new holes in the Recaro brackets to accomodate the four studs that are staked into the 240 slider mechanism (the mechanism is basically two sliding rails connected by the handy-dandy adjustment latch bar that runs across the front of the seat bottom). The assembly bolted into the car in the stock location without much fuss. The seat rides a bit lower than the stock Volvo seat, mostly because the tilt mechanism is absent, but I find it quite comfortable for my 6'3" self. It slides back and forth without binding, and the angle is fine for me.

I think it would be possible to fab some sort of bracket that would accomodate the tilt mechanism, but it would probably require more than a Saturday afternoon.

You can usually find a pair of these Recaros for $100 to $500, depending on whether they've been reupholstered. All of the upholstery, webbing, foam and whatnot are still available, and they're sturdy seats.

Mike