Suburban bucket seats in a truck

[DirtyLarry]

So the other day a buddy and I ran across these bucket seats in a 1991 Suburban at the boneyard for $100 (actually $99 as I found a dollar bill in the center console ). They cleaned up pretty nice but the fabric is a little too light. I ordered some cool Trailgear seat covers from Cabela’s that are a little darker and will repell water, mud, etc. Being this is a fishing and camping trail rig that is the type of covers I need anyway. The seat covers wouldn’t look good in a street machine truck though. I’ll post pic of those when they show up.

When we found them at the boneyard.


Cleaned up nicely after a lot of shampooing


Homemade bracket for the inboard front portion of the seats. My buddy that is a heck of a lot better fabricator than I am made them out of a pair of old heavy duty Hi-Lift jack mounting brackets I had laying around. Thanks to bigblock73 for his template on his website!! It came in very handy! Thanks Jeff!


Then the old ’72 parts chaser, dump runner, beater truck got the old bench seat from the ’78.

[watahyahknow]

nice looking seats , there was one project on here he used the old frontmounts for these seats out of the burban he drilled out the spotwelds to take them out of the donor and mounted the seats in the truck with the rear bolted on the original mounts and the front ones bolted on the seatframe to get the point they needed to be in the truck and welded them to the floor , worked and looked pretty factory

[edge]

another nice addition Dirty! and upgrade for the beater.

[cjracing15]

Nice install Larry. The seats look really nice.

[78 Chevyrado]

Looks great, I have those same seats in red and I love them they are very comfortable to me.

[DirtyLarry]

Originally Posted by watahyahknow

nice looking seats , there was one project on here he used the old frontmounts for these seats out of the burban he drilled out the spotwelds to take them out of the donor and mounted the seats in the truck with the rear bolted on the original mounts and the front ones bolted on the seatframe to get the point they needed to be in the truck and welded them to the floor , worked and looked pretty factory

I agree, that would have been a better way of doing it. I didn’t bother pulling up the carpet on the Suburban to look at the bracket as I didn’t realize there was a bracket spot welded to the floor burried under the carpet until I saw Jeff’s information on his website. By then the boneyard was already closed for the New Year’s holiday so we got creative. The floor of the Suburban was also covered in goat head stickers so that made unbolting the seats and console bracket painful. Getting to those brackets drilled out would have been even more challenging and painful

Thanks for the compliments guys! The seats are very comfy! Got to get used to my new clutch pedal feel though as the angle of my leg is now slightly different when pushing on it. The Centerforce clutch is a bit touchy as it was and now I have to learn to drive it all over again.

[killthewabbit]

Goat head stickers? WTF?

Sounds like a candidate for a list of potential band names.

[DirtyLarry]

Originally Posted by killthewabbit

Goat head stickers? WTF?

Sounds like a candidate for a list of potential band names.

They must just be a Southwest pest weed that produces these little annoying thorns that get stuck in your bike tires, pets paws, shoes, Suburban floor, etc. Come to think if it, I don't recall seeing these little SOB’s when I lived in Michigan.

They hurt like hell too. Not sure how the Sub got so full of them unless mice drug them in. Wish I would have gotten a picture.

The plant (weed)



The thorns

[killthewabbit]

Ah, OK. That makes more sense.

They do kind of look like goat heads, don't they?

[79gmcc15]

that looks awesome! that is something I would like to do sometime down the road! thanks for implanting another idea in my head about what to do with my truck lol.

[chevyrestoguy]

Yep, those are goatheads!! Those things are everywhere out here in the desert Southwest. My poor Pug is always stepping on them and 3-legging it back into the house. They are painful as hell when you step on one without shoes.

While we're on the subject about bucket seats, has anyone come up with a method of making the passenger seat move forward and aft (like the driver's seat) on the factory short buckets? I have a set, and the drivers side moves fwd and aft, but the passenger side is bolted solid and doesn't move, per the factory set-up. I thought about getting the track setup from a later bucket seat equipped Suburban, but wasn't sure if it would work. Anybody try this?

[Prong]

Seems to me that somebody here did that. They just used (with some slight mods as I recall) the driver's side tracks on the passenger side to have it be adjustable. The only quirk is that the adjuster is inboard towards the console, which made for a tight fit to play with the adjustment.

[DirtyLarry]

Yeah, the factory buckets in the trucks are nonadjustable on the passenger’s side. Even my 68 GMC with factory buddy buckets is that way which sucks.

With the Sub brackets you will have a passenger’s side that is adjustable. In addition to fabricating the inboard front bracket you also need to rework the Sub brackets to fit the truck floor towards the rear. What we did is cut a V groove in the brackets near the back mounting hole and bend them to match the contour of original bench brackets then welded up the V groove. Hard to explain w/o a picture but it makes sense once you get the brackets in your hand.

The Sub seats also have adjustable seat backs with a rotary dial in the inboard of the seat near the console. Kind of a stupid place for the adjuster but I guess that did it that way to clear the seat belt mechanism.

Board member bigblock73 has a great article on buckets on his website.

http://www.73-87.com/7387garage/inte...ry_buckets.htm

[watahyahknow]

out here in holland when we want sumtin like that we go look for an english car , they have the steering on the "wrong side" of the car so the passenger seat IS the drivers seat , you might want to see if you can find an ausie who can ship you a set of seat rail from there .
actually is a good source for non ripped drivers seats as whell as its a passengerseat on a righthanddrive car