bucket conversion and console
 

bought buckets and a console out of a suburban for 100 dollars. Got the brackets also. seems they need some slight mods to fit.
a winter project recover in black leather and red around the edges. going to fill in the console cracks and paint to match. The arm rest may need to go because of clearance to door.

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

You will need a couple of seat perches and console mount out of a burb and mount them like these it should make installing those seats alot easier.

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

great pics I have the front brackets .I can make the rear brackets by looking at what you have in the pictures, thanks you saved me some time.

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

I am getting ready to do this as well...Gonna keep my eye on this thread.

I think the rear brackets have to be bent to follow the contour of the floor.

Idiot that I am , I forgot to get the bracket for the console..Doesn't look like it would be to bad to fab one up out of some angle stock.

One question I have is I always see these buckets with armrests on both sides, what vehicles did they come out of? I took mine out of an 85 suburban and it only has armrests on the inside.

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

You also may want to put a re-enforcement plate under the cab were the rear bracket mounts. It is common on cars with bench seats to not have the re-enforcement put in and it will tear the floor over time. looks like the truck has a more sustantial bracket but I woudl still consider it. the front appears to mount to the origianl seat hole on the outside so it will be fine but the inside would probably need re-enforcing as well.

Anyone know if the factory bucket trucks/suburbans have the re-enforcement pad I am talking about?

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

I welded in the front bracket . I fabricated brackets for the back and welded them to the floor. Good note about needing backing reinforcement . I had a 89 seat (above pic) It was welded to the floor with tubing spacers. I had to weld up holes upon removing. Thinks welding both sides of the bracket will insure seat will never work loose.Also the armrests are going away on at least the drivers side for clearance reasons.

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Armrests will clear the doors the burbs are the same width. And you'll want to add some 4" spacers for the console to sit on if you want it to be like a modern truck and not feel like its way down there out of reach.

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

I got everything back together. Decided against leather. Had trouble getting black paint sticking to the console. I cleaned and prepped and prepped. So i kept the red everything else . Added red to the black seats. New rug and sound proofing . covered the rear of the cab with a real thin board painted black with sound proofing behind that. need black seatbelts. Having trouble finding gm. may need to buy new.

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Posted via Mobile Device. Interior is done except seatbelts. I got the sem paint to work well after using the sand free and leather prep and heating my work area. I changed the red to black and added headliner and trim from u- pull-it. My truck didnt come stock the way The raider Headliner may be a bit over the top. Black seatbelt are a challenge to find
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Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Looks great! No armrests? You can’t beat Suburban buckets and that SEM paint works great! Did the same to mine a few years ago. Mine were even the same color as yours. :lol:

One thing I don’t like about these old center consoles is the hard plastic where stuff in the tray and pop cans in the holders rattle like crazy. Been thinking about spraying the cup holder area with Plasti Dip just to try to make it quieter. Junk in the center consoles of new trucks don’t rattle and make so much noise, there has to be a way to make these old ones quieter.

90 Suburban donor
http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1093/3...39c003d908.jpg

After reupholstery
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5214/5...737e018558.jpg

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Those seats look great! Did you use the perches for the inside tracks?

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Me? No, I used a couple Hi-Lift jack mounting brackets that I had lying around. :lol: They were practically a spot on clone to the factory bracket and worked great. Much easier than cutting brackets out of donor vehicle at the junk yard too.
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3089/3...74106c76d0.jpg

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Very true about the rattling of stuff in the console..Drives me crazy sometimes.
Did you raise it or keep it on the floor??
What did you do with the back wall of the cab??

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

I covered the back of the cab in thin boarding painted black. I attached studs for mounting. For mounting the console I welded studs to the floor. A lot easier to install and remove. dirtylarry looks very nice like the two tone
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Re: bucket conversion and console
 

kinda a swap,
89 burb buckets and console for the 78 jimmy
just drilled new holes
love the arm rests,kinda keep you in the seat...
yup the change rattles drive me nuts in the 79
sounds terrible in some driving vids
the inner front seat mount bolt, holds up the mufflers lol

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

yup, stuff rattling in the console is ANNOYING! my wife's envoy has rubber inserts in the cubby's, expounding on the idea, i cut up an old bike inner tube & glued it into the cubby's on my '85. sanity is back!

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

good idea
i wanted to make some compartments

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

:chevy:found some black seatbelts at a u pull-it. It as been a real challenge

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

If the snow keeps melting maybe I can find some too..I have gray ones out of a suburban they don't fit too well in the pickup.
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Re: bucket conversion and console
 

that looks great man...I wanna get me some burb seat for mine. i'll be on the look out...maybe ill find a deal somewhere

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Posted via Mobile Device my carpet for the doors arrived . The paint on the doors was rough . The colors is not a match but not bad . Anything was better then the red . The interior is complete
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Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Those seats look great, I can understand why you ditched the armrests since they sit too low to be useful anyways.

I just picked up gray 89 Sub buckets this week and installed them. Far better than all of the previous seats that have been installed in the truck. Seems odd to me that the factory put the recline knobs on the inside facing the console. Is that correct?

Also, did you guys with rattling consoles not get the felt covered cardboard lining that goes in the console? Mine came with a rather clean one.

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

I've tried 89 recliners both ways,(changes the wear patterns too) better to be able to do it from outside( in the jimmy) I found
no felt here
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Re: bucket conversion and console
 

ran similar setup in my lifted 84 ...

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y300/tg413/xx089.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y300/tg413/xx087.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y300/tg413/xx050.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y300/tg413/xx053.jpg

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

What's the overhead console and light set up from? That's awesome.

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

It's the Suburban overhead console. I didn't grab the overhead console because it looked too long. Did you cut it down to fit?

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

it came out of an 87 suburban , Yeah i had to modify it a little but it came out nice...

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Dragging this back out of the cobwebs. I have some questions if you can bear with me. Looking at buying a set of 90 burb buckets, console seat belts and dash for my shortbed.

First ? is do I need to switch the seat brackets from the buckets to ones from a bench as I have heard you can do that or is it just as easy to get the brackets from the burb for the inners of the buckets. Also does the female end of the seat belt bolt in where the seat bolts down on these?

Second ? is about the overhead console. I am going for the look that Gates72 has in his pics. I think that turned out nice. Are most of the lets say 85-91 overhead consoles the same length? I was thinking of an 03 Silverado console but might be easier to do one of these. Exactly how to they mount. Are there brackets welded to the roof or is there some type of reinforcement there?

Third thing is door panels. I like the look of Gates72 passenger side door panel. The only problem is getting one to match the drivers side without having four window switches. So not sure how to work that out. Gmachinz did a pretty good job on his panels. I think he took the burb cloth insert out and trimmed it down and put it in a truck door panel. The thing with that is finding the correct shade of gray in a truck which I don't think they made. Running out of options here. I have also thought about putting in the drivers side burb panel and try using one of the back window switches to operate my back power sliding glass window. Not really fond of having that look since to me it kind of looks half a** done. I want to have the same cloth as the seats in the door panels. Any suggestions on any of this.

Oh and one more thing. How much difference is the burb seat belts compared to the truck belts. Someone mentioned they don't fit quite right. Would I be better off using the truck male belts and the burb female ends. I know this is alot of questions but thought this might be the right thread to add to. Thanks guys.

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

You should be able to use all of the burb bucket seat tracks, but you will need to modify the angle at the back of them to fit the contour of the truck floor. Also, grab the inside front bucket towers from the donor burb.

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Heres a snap shot of the blazer seats in the rig im working on picking up. This was actually installed by the dealer when it was new. Apparently the story goes the buyer ordered the truck bucket seats, and it came in with a bench. So they were furious and to please them the dealer pulled seats from a blazer and made brackets for the seats to bolt in to the truck..... Im personally not a huge fan but they look better than the bench! The back seat actually matches the front buckets pattern wise. Ill probably pull them once i buy it though....I can try and get some better pics this weekend seeing as how im gonna go hang out there.
https://scontent-b-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/...48949873_n.jpg

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Thank You!

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

The seat belts that I grabbed out of a burb are designed a little differently. They sit up higher and are a little above the seat. Not a big deal, but I would like to replace with a truck belt. The seat belt retractor is actually acouple of
inces off the floor. You can't really tell from this picture.
Attachment 1208599

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Do they just not set right when latched on you? Wasn't really sure what the issue was. I do have some charcoal belts from a pickup if I have to use them. The 90 burb seats I am buying will come with the belts too.. I just replied in another thread to Gmachinz as he said there is two different inner latch styles. One must set up more by the seat making it easier to get ahold of and latch. Not sure if the other wants to fall down to the floor or what. I have to send payment yet on them but hopefully soon they will be here. All I need now is the burb cloth door panel inserts to match the seats.

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

If you look at the retractor "box" you can see it is a little higher then the seat..It could be because the seats are so old and squished down.

If you want to sell your charcoal seat belts, I would be VERY interested.

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

look for a burb with power locks and manual windows,it will work for the drivers door

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Those talking about stuff rattling in the console look at this refurb link. The 81-87(91)'s had a liner in them.

http://forum.73-87chevytrucks.com/sm...p?topic=9540.0

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Good idea!

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Am i the only one wo did it the semi hard way? Got my buckets for $35
http://i.imgur.com/K0tSFXll.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/YlbvWr1l.jpg

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Is that something that you bought somewhere? If so could you provide a link to them? I searched and saw that they're a jeep accessory part, but did you buy them separately somewhere?

I got some burb buckets I recovered and I need to get 'em installed.

Re: bucket conversion and console
 

Yeah, but I don’t know if $34 would be worth buying an entire Hi-Lift jack mounting kit just to cut up one bracket. I just happen to have them laying around left over from a different project and found the bracket seemed to work well for installing the bucket seats :lol:. Seems like something could be created from scratch for much less money rather than ordering them just for this purpose.

You can buy them from Desert Rat
http://www.desertrat.com/images_products/4254.jpg