Seat Bracket and Seat Mods:
So once the airbag conversion was done, I now needed to mount my MRAP seat.
There are several threads on ways of doing this. Usually a flat plate does the trick. But that seemed way to easy and direct...
Looking at the seat, it's an interesting combo of metric and SAE hardware, and the frame is made of both steel and aluminum.
The apparent mounting holes are on a steel section of the bracket that ties into the major load points of the seat. I wanted to use those mounts. The plate-mount method usually ties into aluminum sections of other brackets closer to the center of the seat. Probably nothing wrong with that, but I decided to use the outer mounting holes in the steel bracket.
Being a tall fellow (6'3") I started by putting the seat mount as far back on the sliders as I could.
The four outside holes in that plate are for the seat. But it turns out that this holds the seat WAY too far back in the vehicle for the backrest to have any angle. So I added two more holes and use the forward 4 of the 6 holes. Here's the finished bracket.
A plate certainly would have been simpler.... And the bracket installed on the sliders
Next it became painfully obvious that the fixed recline angle of the MRAP seat was way too far back to be usable in the deuce (at least for someone my size). Other threads had mentioned a similar issue and solved it by removing the lower of the two bolts (on each side) of the seatback, allowing it to pivot to new angle, then re-drilling lower hole.
I removed the seat flip up springs (don't need it on driver's seat) and the lower bolts, installed it in truck and played with seating positions.
I then removed the upper rear bar for the shoulder restraints. It used up more than an inch of available recline. If and when I decide to put in shoulder harnesses, I'll have to make a lower profile version of that bracket. So basically, I tested positions with the seat back "floppy" and reclined such that it was sliding on the back of the cab. Once I found a combination of seat height, slider position, and recline that was the most comfortable for me, I spaced the seatback about 3/4" from the back of cab, and marked the position for the new hole.
Here are a few pics of the stock position of the seatback and the the bolt holes and the new reclined position
and a view of the bracket from inside
Okay, so far so good.
Only problem now is that the new hole will be partway off the steel bracket that the original went thru...
(cant seem to get this image to rotate...)
I've marked the arc for the new hole position. The new hole centerpoint is very close to the edge of the bracket. Oh, and this is a good pic (if maybe too close up) to mention the steel and aluminum. The bracket in the foreground is steel, the one behind it is aluminum. I didn't want the new lower bolt hole relying on just the strength of the aluminum...
So... I made my life a bit more difficult. I decided to add reinforcement to the steel bracket...
and it all started with a hole saw...
Then I took that slug, cut it in half, and began fitting and welding...
I did that on both sides of the seat (of course). It's a bit of a no-no to weld while the seat was assembled, but it was a fast weld, and it worked out well.
So then, and the part I'm least happy with, was repainting. The MRAP seats have a nice thick textured finish. The closest thing I had on hand was some wrinkle finish paint.
While it didn't come out stellar, it will protect it just fine.
And that folks, is the long story of how I mounted my MRAP seat in my deuce...
A Happy New Year to all!
ciao
lino
