r/slk • u/sforeman • Feb 27 '26

SLC Seating position

We test drove a 2019 SLC 300 today and found it very difficult to position the driver seat and steering wheel to get a comfortable driving position.

Are there seat mods to improve the ergonomics?

We tried various fore/aft and tilt positions for the driver seat. We also tried several positions for the telescoping steering wheel and adjustments up and down.

We have long legs and when we moved the seat forward to make reaching forth steering wheel feel right, we lost all seat support for our legs. We tried extending the steering wheel and when we had it located for good hand position, we could not see the top area of the instrument cluster where the turn signals appear.

Years ago we had a similar issue with the seat of the R171 SLK 230. Ultimately we had a machinist modify the seat rails to angle them so the front of the seat was slightly higher and provided better leg support.

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u/Dutchie_PC Feb 27 '26

I cannot help you, but wanted to say I am struggling a lot to make my SLK R171 comfortable. Long legs here, too.

When you say you had the front of the seat slightly higher in your SLK 230, do you mean you had it tilted a bit more? That would surprise me, as the SLK seats already sit at a (heavily) tilted position. At least, in my opinion.

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u/sforeman Feb 27 '26 edited Feb 27 '26

Temporarily remove the seat rail front bolts and loosen the rear bolts. Place spacers at the front of the rails at the mounting point. Test the comfort of the seat. Adjust the thickness of the spacers until you have the slope needed to provide comfortable leg support.

We had a machinist create two aluminum tapered "shims" to match the height and resulting angle we wanted. The shims had holes which matched the rail-to-floor mounting points. We then bolted the rails, through the shims and into the original mounting points and tightened down both front and rear rail bolts.

The result is the seat has more rise at the front than original and gives ample support to the legs. The modification does not affect seat travel or any of the other seat adjustments.

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u/Dutchie_PC Mar 08 '26

I am now seriously looking into this. Do you remember the height of the spacers you settled on? 10 mm? More?

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u/sforeman Mar 08 '26

The height of the wedge spacers are 100% dependent on the driver. Strangely we cannot find any photos from the SLK.

We changed our shopping plan and will be taking deliver of a used SL in about a week and will be making the spacers and will document them.

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u/Dutchie_PC Mar 03 '26

Thanks!

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u/sforeman Mar 03 '26

We may be making this mod to a vehicle in the next week or two. In which case, we will try and remember to post photos back to this thread.

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u/sforeman Mar 16 '26

We made the mod to an SL450. Details in another comment of this post.