96 ext cab passenger seat is a rocking chair

[Kevinshelton19]

As title states, seat has good amount of forward to back play, upon investigating the seat is tightly bolted down. However the rail the seat slides on appears to of been bent upwards effectively turning what i presume to be a 90 degree angle in the rail into something more like 120 degree. The issue is from what i can tell without pulling the seat out it may be a royal PITA to remove the chair from said rail to straighten it back. Also the seat is in pretty good condition considering the year which may make swapping the seat out entirely somewhat tough as far as finding a seat in as good or better condition then the current one.
Does anyone have any experience separating the seat from the rail ? for that matter would you trust the metal rail being bent back into shape? any insight would be much appreciated. and btw i have no idea what caused this in the first place as the seat was in this condition when i purchased it.


TLDR. Seat rocks, Rail is bent, can the seat be taken apart without destroying it.

 

[someotherguy]

Remove the seat and look closer underneath. The internal frame is likely broken at a corner; pretty common on the 95-up seat style. The sheetmetal frame inside the seat is what breaks.

Richard

 

[scottydl]

Remove the seat and look closer underneath. The internal frame is likely broken at a corner; pretty common on the 95-up seat style. The sheetmetal frame inside the seat is what breaks.

That is exactly what happened on my Burb's drivers seat. It rocks around a little, and took me some hunting around with a flashlight (and I think I was pretty much turned upside down at the time, looking under the seat) to find the one busted corner as Richard described.

So is that repairable?

 

[someotherguy]

Probably, depending on how bad it is and where it broke. I've seen several of them welded. You just need to be really careful as you don't want to set the cloth or the foam on fire! Jam some non-flammable material in there as a barrier, like some sheetmetal scraps, or something like that.

Richard

 

[89RCLB]

Remove the seat and look closer underneath. The internal frame is likely broken at a corner; pretty common on the 95-up seat style. The sheetmetal frame inside the seat is what breaks.

Richard

I can't speak to the likeness in construction between the 88-94 seats and 95 up but this is what my brother and I found when we did the bench to bucket seat conversion on his 89. We were able to weld the frame in the broken corners and they've been solid since.

The 94 buckets we installed were pulled from a burb that had been owned by a couple that was very obese, both seats required repair due to their weight.

 

[someotherguy]

Oh yeah, similar construction, just the 95-up seats seem so much weaker to me. Basing this off I've seen many more of them broken vs. the earlier seats, which I almost never found broken. Worn to hell at the edge of the driver seat foam, but that's all...where the 95-up will have broken frames, and the foam disintegrating into powder...

Anyway here's a bucket in a '93 Suburban that I picked up as a parts truck. This had to be one of the most heavily-abused trucks I ever bought. The driver seat was broken so badly I don't understand how anybody was driving this thing without injury; sharp metal pieces poking out of the seat.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

They'd also driven it with blown/rusted out freeze plugs to the point of overheating the **** out of it, and for lord knows what reason beat on the radiator tanks with a hammer or something so that the plastic was busted away at the upper corners. Exterior door handles were mangled on all 4 doors. Interior stunk like hell, coated in old fried chicken or something. I struggled to get it running long enough to test out the transmission, then the engine locked up. It did provide a good bumper, grille, and paint-matching hood for the '93 extended cab I rebuilt, though!

Richard

 

[skylark]

Oh yeah, similar construction, just the 95-up seats seem so much weaker to me. Basing this off I've seen many more of them broken vs. the earlier seats, which I almost never found broken. Worn to hell at the edge of the driver seat foam, but that's all...where the 95-up will have broken frames, and the foam disintegrating into powder...

Anyway here's a bucket in a '93 Suburban that I picked up as a parts truck. This had to be one of the most heavily-abused trucks I ever bought. The driver seat was broken so badly I don't understand how anybody was driving this thing without injury; sharp metal pieces poking out of the seat.

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

You must be registered for see images attach

They'd also driven it with blown/rusted out freeze plugs to the point of overheating the **** out of it, and for lord knows what reason beat on the radiator tanks with a hammer or something so that the plastic was busted away at the upper corners. Exterior door handles were mangled on all 4 doors. Interior stunk like hell, coated in old fried chicken or something. I struggled to get it running long enough to test out the transmission, then the engine locked up. It did provide a good bumper, grille, and paint-matching hood for the '93 extended cab I rebuilt, though!

Richard

That is seriously hammered!

 

[89RCLB]

Oh yeah, similar construction, just the 95-up seats seem so much weaker to me. Basing this off I've seen many more of them broken vs. the earlier seats, which I almost never found broken. Worn to hell at the edge of the driver seat foam, but that's all...where the 95-up will have broken frames, and the foam disintegrating into powder...

Anyway here's a bucket in a '93 Suburban that I picked up as a parts truck. This had to be one of the most heavily-abused trucks I ever bought. The driver seat was broken so badly I don't understand how anybody was driving this thing without injury; sharp metal pieces poking out of the seat.


They'd also driven it with blown/rusted out freeze plugs to the point of overheating the **** out of it, and for lord knows what reason beat on the radiator tanks with a hammer or something so that the plastic was busted away at the upper corners. Exterior door handles were mangled on all 4 doors. Interior stunk like hell, coated in old fried chicken or something. I struggled to get it running long enough to test out the transmission, then the engine locked up. It did provide a good bumper, grille, and paint-matching hood for the '93 extended cab I rebuilt, though!

Richard

That steering wheel looks like it came from a 67-72 truck...sticks out like a sore thumb!