I just got a 2017 with Recaros. Maybe its just because I'm older, and my head isn't permanently tilted forward from looking at my phone all the time
but I had to do something about the headrests pushing my head forward. I considered the Focus swap, but thought I'd try to modify the Recaro headrests first. If I messed them up, I could still do the swap.
I understand I'm dealing with a safety feature, but the headrest tubing is very strong. I put the driver's headrest in my vice, gripping just one rod, dropping it until the bottom of the headrest rested on the top of the vise jaws. I squared it up in all directions and tried various ways to bend it and could not. Finally, I slid a pipe all the way up onto the rod that was sticking out of the bottom of the vice jaws. I gently and gradually pulled the pipe back until I could feel the rod bend just a little, did the same thing to the other rod to match them up, and then tried the headrest for fit.
I went through this process several times until the angle felt right...and then, of course, I did one more adjustment and went a little too far. See in-car photo of modified driver headrest and stock passenger headrest. Rather than bend the rods back a little, I figured I would use this headrest when I'm wearing a helmet. Then I adjusted the other headrest just right for no helmet. See second photo with helmet headrest on the left and no-helmet headrest on the right. Because I worked on the driver headrest first, and that ended up being my helmet headrest, I switched the passenger and driver headrests for daily/no-helmet driving. The indentations don't click into place exactly right, but they're solid once in.
Upsides: Everything looks stock. The headrests fit great now: one for daily driving and another for wearing a helmet. No more tilting my head forward.
No more constantly bouncing my head off the headrest. I can sit fully back in the seat to take advantage of the shoulder bolstering.
Potential down-sides: There's now a "kink" in the rods, but no one's going to notice it and there's no way to avoid that when bending them cold, in a vise. I guess there's a question of whether I've weakened the headrest. Maybe, but even on the final bends, I still needed a lot of torque on a two-foot-long pipe to bend them. Also, I think that because my head is almost touching the headrest, if I'm hit from behind, my head won't travel enough to accelerate enough to make a difference. The passenger/helmet headrest sits a little farther back, but it's still only a matter of an extra inch or two. I'm keeping the passenger seat back tilted slightly more forward to compensate for that.
Overall, I'm happy. And isn't that what really matters?
