Passenger Enabled with a problem

[Barrman]

I finally got around to installing the mid '90's Suburban 3rd seat in the bed of my M715 tonight. I have had it sitting in my horse barn for almost a year now, but not had the motivation to install it. The way our town does 4th of July fireworks is everybody drives to the fair grounds, sits in the bed of their trucks and watches from the perimeter of the grounds. The M715 is perfect for this with the top off. But, the fairgrounds are off a Federal highway and I really need to strap in whoever is in the bed going to and from. My mom is going to be at our house then, so I need seating for 4 people.

This seat folds flat and come out in about 1 minute. I used 24" of 1/2 steel rod to make the 4 mounting tabs and welded them into the bed. Here is the seat set up so I can sit in it and still have plenty of leg room.





There is still room behind the seat for a few coolers too.



Now, I just need to figure out how to either paint the leather seat green or fit some canvas over it. Any ideas.

[compexp]

looks good - could you post a pic of how you did the mounts please?

[gimpyrobb]

My first car was a 76 buick skylark (read nova). I had a custom seat cover made for it for about 180.00. I think it would have been 550 for a re-upholster job. The only differance was "ribs" sewn in the seat. It looked great. I'd see if you can do the same. Maybe get a bench style seat cover in red-neck-camo for a temp fix.

[kwai]

Camo seat cover for a quick, cheap fix. Have it recovered in canvas later.

[Barrman]

I will look for a cover.

Rich, I was happy as could be that I had it all together and it fit. I had pulled that seat out about 20 times test fitting and such and didn't feel like doing it again. I will do so tonight though and get pictures.

[compexp]

thank you sir!

I was thinking of something like that, but with mounts that lift the seat up a bit and use aircraft-grade pins to attach to the bed.

[Binford]

Yes, I'd like to see the pics of how you mount it too. I was thinking of putting the mouting on a piece (or two) of heavy angle iron and simply bolting the angle iron in the bed when I need to put the seat in. But you put the mounting pins IN your bed, huh? I eagerly await the pics....

[Barrman]

Not pins. I will take pictures and write more tonight.

[Barrman]

Here are the nuts and bolts of it.

This is a section of the floor from the seat donor vehicle. Thanks again to Sermis for cutting them out. I didn't want to cut my bed floor up that much though and elected to make a different mount system. You will notice that it is just a recessed 1/2" rod going across from left to right.


This is a side view of the seat and the mounting system. Notice the front on the right is just an open slot and the rears have a bear trap type locking mechanism.



Here is one of the 4 stands I built. 1/2" rolled steel bent cold with a small sledge. 1-1/2" tall and 2" across. I built them so they weld to the low parts of the bed and stradle the tall runners.



Here are all 4 of them installed.



Here is a bed level view of the right side mounts with the seat installed. Notice that my stradling the runners caused the seat side of the mounts to be off center on the ones I built. But, that will actually keep the seat from sliding side to side because there is only abut 1/4" for it to slide combined on both sides.



Now I need to buff them up, paint them, cut out my rubber bed mat to clear them and then figure out some kind of solid rubber/plastic/wood thing to slip over them so when I load heavy stuff in the bed, they won't bend over or be toe jamb hazards.

[Barrman]

Something else to add is that the fuel tank mounted right under the bed was my main concern with cutting into my bed floor. Then the amount of work and finally mutulating a good bed in that order in case anybody was wondering why I didn't do something through the bed floor.