88-98 Bucket seat alternatives

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sewlow

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The seats sit on tracks which are sitting on 'risers'. It's the risers that your drilling the holes for. Both the buckets & the 60/40 have inside risers which the bench doesn't have.
That's 2 holes for each of the new inside risers.. My previous explanation was kinda muddy. Some trucks have the holes premarked from the factory, mostly the ex.cabs & crews.
The seats have those big springs underneath on one of the tracks which pull the track back. (Forward when in the truck)
BE VERY CAREFUL with those! If they are under tension & you hit the release by accident, those tracks will whip back really REALLY fast! Like, remove fingers tips or be the cause of some more stitches! You'll only do that once! (Hmmm...how do I know this? Lol!)
When removing the seats, slide the seat back & remove the front bolts, then slide the seat forward & remove the rear ones.
This will keep that spring from being stretched & ready to strike!
Not only that, but because of the positioning of the seat according to the tracks, now they will mostly stay upright on their own when outa the truck.
When installing them in your truck, I'd recommend removing the carpet.
Drop the seats in & bolt them up using the original outer holes. Then mark the new holes to be drilled for the inside risers. You might find that they are already marked for you. Remove the seats & drill 'em holes.
Use some of the biggest mondo washers you can find underneath or a metal plate would even be better. Just to keep the bolts from pulling through the floor if anything was ever to happen.
 

1500z71

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Great information above^ Be mindful, however, that some risers have been in place for years and years and may try to bow out when all that tension is taken off of them. This happened to me when I took my buckets out to clean house. Took hours and a handy crowbar to get them back in. Granted, there may be a specific way to bolt them back down, and I would be very interested to hear if there is such a way.
 

6POINT5

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Great, info. Thanks very much! That will make things a lot easier to install.
I have a 2500 Diesel regular cab and it has vinyl floors. I'll remove it to mark and drill the holes and then re install the vinyl and cut as needed.
Only problem I have at this point is the flip center console on the 60/40 seat at the scrap yard had a broken latch. I'm going to see if I can fix it before pulling it out because it's the only 60/40 seat for that bodystyle at the wrecker.
There is also one with a clean set of buckets but I'm worried they would feel a bit crowded in a regular cab?
 

Justin S

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Mine.
6 way power, tilt & lumbar. Love 'em.
I'd have a sert in my other truck too, but my dog already thinks I'm enough of an A-hole. He's 100lbs. Either he's too big or the seats are too small. He says they're too small!

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Don't know why, but those seats make me thing Power Rangers :p
 

df2x4

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Don't know why, but those seats make me thing Power Rangers :p

They make me wish @sewlow didn't live so far north...

I've said it before, but if I ever do some kind of crazy "money is no object" show car build, I'm going to try really hard to make sure he's the one doing the interior.

Al, amazing work man.
 

sewlow

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Don't know why, but those seats make me thing Power Rangers :p

Lol! The flash makes the seats look a brighter red than the actually are.
But it's all getting redone. I did those 10 years (maybe more) & 250,000 miles ago.
Kinda have an idea for a design. That usually gets finalized when I'm actually cutting stuff out & patterning.
I'm doing a bunch of handstitching on them so I can't go too wild on the design. Pic #2 shows the type of stitch.
Colors? 3 shades of grey with a touch of red? Maybe a bit of charcoal details, too?
Grey/offwhite/black? arrgghh!
Ever see Eric Clapton's '40 Ford Biz Coupe?
Gotta couple hides of some really nice carmel colored leather. (Have to re-dye & re-wrap everything inside!)
Not this design, maybe this color combo though.
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There's another couple of hides upstairs that are darker than the carpets in that pic of E.C.'s 40, but along the same color lines. Maybe just replace the red in my seats with that, + dark grey carpet.
I dunno. I do this kinda stuff for others, no prob. Comes to doing mine & I can't decide on nothing!
 
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