Finished up the front seats as well.
I had actually started on the seats several months ago, but they needed a few final changes. I know that's an odd starting point, but to be honest the interior had a bit of a funk. I had no interest in driving the truck around in the funky (as in body funk) stock bench seats.
I stripped out the bench seats, rubber floor mats, and insulation. There was nothing really terrible except along the passenger side, dirt had caked in along with sunflower seed shells to create a 1/2" crust of dirt I had to chip out with a screw driver.
I built a frame with 1" square tube welded to the factory bench seat mounts/brackets.
Now I must confess, I was obviously out of practice with fabricating and I made a few errors building the frame. Keeping in mind this was the first fab project I did on the crew cab. I hadn't had to fabricate anything major on the General in a couple of years.
The first mistake I made was to make the frame too narrow front to back to fit the factory seat seat mounts. You'll notice in the picture the little pieces of angle iron at the front; those were used to make up the difference. I also used them to put some recline on the seats (which gets changed later).
I have sliders for the suspension seats and I mounted those to the frame.
The sliders have factory installed bolts for mounting to the frame I built and they couldn't be easily replaced. They aren't long enough to extend through the 1" tube. So I drilled larger holes on the bottom to allow access for a socket.
I also feel it makes a cleaner look.
You can see the brackets to bolt the seats to the sliders are nice and tight to the frame:
Here it is bolted in the cab:
This is when I discovered my second fabrication error. I measured the width of the mounting tabs on the seats to get my spacing for the seat frame I fabricated. However I failed to realize the obvious, that the mounting bolts for the sliders are going to be narrower than the tabs on the seats. The difference was 1". I added a second runner for each seat that was 1" closer to the outside of the frame. I left the original, incorrectly located, pieces because I may find use for them in mounting other things to the frame.
Once I bolted the seat to the slider it turned out the brackets are too tight to the frame. The problem is that the mounting tabs on the seats stick down past the brackets and hit the frame.
The brackets can be flipped over to raise the seat up.
The problem was this raised the seat too high and my legs were in the steering wheel. I ended up adding a 1/4" thick strap under the sliders to raise them up enough to clear.
I like this best because I think the overall install is cleaner with the brackets flipped down to cover the sliders.
Here are both seats in the cab.
I decided I wanted a driver seat with lower side supports to get in and out easier. The passenger seat is a Daily Driver version from PRP, but mine with the yellow piping is a competition high back. I was able to sell my seat and get a Beard seat like I wanted all for the same price.
All I did yesterday was drop the front of the seats down 1" and move them forward on the frame 3". They had too much recline and they slid too far back almost hitting the new rear seats. Too much recline angle on the seat made it hard to run the clutch pedal.
If my plan doesn't work out I'll hit you up for some help.
