Seat Mounting ?s

[meanboyjr]

The stocks seats in my '76 are hashed. The driver's side is the worst.

I picked up an ugly pair of seats from a neighbor, who said they were from a "Chevy truck", with no other info forthcoming. They're on the small side, so I'm guessing S10.

Anyway, the mounting brackets are smaller than the ones in the Blazer. I could -

1) Make some brackets for the new seats from 1/4" strip and use the existing mounting holes, or

2) Drill new holes and bolt the seats in with some Grade 8 hardware and large flat washers.

Your opinion - what is the safer route?

EDIT: What I mean to say is that the mounting bracket footprint is smaller - about 12.5" instead of 15" across the front.

 

['86erfixer]

Drilling new holes would be the quick fix. Easier/faster. I'd put a decent size of metal under the floors to keep the seats from pulling a washer through the floor in event of a sudden impact.

Brackets would be much cleaner but more time consuming. Still would prob attach new seats to frame from underneath. If new seats dont have seat belts in them it might be a bit overkill. But if you're working on that area, I'm a fan of doing it better than the guys before (GM).

 

[AJMBLAZER]

Check to see if the seat tracks will fit onto your seat base. A LOT of GM seats of this era used the same footprint when fitting the tracks to the seat base. Pretty common for guys on here to put Cavalier, S10, Camaro, Fiero, etc etc etc buckets on their K5 brackets.

 

[496truck]

Check to see if the seat tracks will fit onto your seat base. A LOT of GM seats of this era used the same footprint when fitting the tracks to the seat base. Pretty common for guys on here to put Cavalier, S10, Camaro, Fiero, etc etc etc buckets on their K5 brackets.

X2, I bet that would be the quick, easy way out.

 

[meanboyjr]

I will take the tape to the brackets and see if I can swap the seats without too much trouble.

The new seats have the reclining backrests, so I'm really stoked about getting them in the K5.

 

[dieselndixie]

I should go down this path soon....both driver and passenger seat in mine are in good shape (cloth wise) but they both would fly forward on their own if I hit something.

What are the easiest, cheapest, most common seats to swap?

 

[496truck]

Easy and cheap? Or comfortable and a bit more work (see my sig)?

On a related note, the second option will not work on the OPs 76 because of the floor design.

 

[meanboyjr]

Digging this back up...

Well, here we are, four plus months later, and I finally decided to get the driver's side seat replaced. You can see that the original is pretty much hashed...

and leaning back like a Lazy Boy recliner...

and yes, it was pretty much impossible to drive with it.

Per the suggestions given previously, I decided to use the stock seat mounting brackets instead of fabbing up my own. I unbolted the driver's side seat from the floor, unbolted the seat brackets from the seat, and put the seat brackets back in the truck. Then, with a little measuring, I realized I needed just a few inches of metal on each side to give the new seat something to bolt to. I had some 1/4" x 1 1/2" strip sitting around, so I drilled some holes and mocked the new strip brackets up in place. I was going to cut some individual brackets and weld them to the original seat brackets, but I had a bunch of the strip around, and I liked how it tied the two sides together, so I went with it.

The new seat is slightly shorter front-to-back, so I used the rear-most mounting holes in the original seat bracket. Believe it or not, they lined right up. Blind luck, but I'll take it.

I bolted the strip brackets to the seat bottoms.

The black bolts are the ones that came on the new seats (they held the tracks on). The silver bolt is the one that will attach it to the old seat bracket, in the existing holes.

Then I just put the seat in place, and bolted it in. Easy.

The difference is night and day. The new seat is a little narrower, but the support is good, and I'm sitting about 2" higher than I was previously (that's how sacked out the old seat was). As an added bonus, the new seat reclines fully, and has an adjustable headrest. Seatbelts works as they should, the adjuster works fine (actually had to move the seat back a click) and the center console fits perfectly.

This took me all of 2 hours, most of it spent measuring twice for the location of the bolt holes. Everything is bolted together right now (the bolts that hold the strip bracket to the bottom seat bracket are some 3/8" Grade 5 stuff I had sitting around) but for safety's sake, I'm going to weld the strip brackets to the bottom of the seat pan, and replace the Grade 5 bolts with some Grade 8 hardware, installed with some Loctite and some large washers. This means that I can unbolt the seat from the original seat brackets and replace it with a stock seat if I ever care to do so (or if I ever find one in decent shape).

The passenger's side seat is not as bad, but the brackets are totally different, since it tilts forward. I haven't figured out how I'm going to replace that one yet. I'll probably wait another few months before I tackle it.

 

[Fingerless]

The passenger side is my biggest one to tackle. I have 2 boys who climb in and out the back of my truck.

Without the forward tilting seat I think my middle console would be worse off than it is now!!!!

Ill Post up when I get to working on the passenger side.... I believe my seats came out of an S-10 Pickup!

 

[meanboyjr]

Ill Post up when I get to working on the passenger side.... I believe my seats came out of an S-10 Pickup!

I don't know where my seats came from, but I'm guessing something GM, as they have AC/Delco part numbers and tags on them.

Whatever they are, they're in a hell of a lot better shape than my stock seats were after all these years.