Sponsored by HUMAN Speakers Bucket Seat Swap HOME

I want to replace the decrepit bench seat in my truck because 1. it is decrepit and 2. I want to be able to use all that wasted space in the center for miscellaneous "truck" necessities like chains, come-alongs, gloves, and rope.

As it turned out, I have an easy path to getting this done, since a guy who works next door at Carworks had already made up a set.

He took the bolt down brackets from an old bench seat, and the sliding rails and adjusting lever part, and welded a frame of one by one square steel stock in a big rectangle to them, keeping their spacing correct (probably by doing it with them bolted into a truck). Then he added a couple of front to back tubes on each side, and drilled them for a pair of bucket seats. I bought the whole mess from him, along with the seats he had drilled the new "frame" to fit.

I should prime this with POR-15 and paint it before installation:

I may try to see if I can mount the floor pan sections I cut out of an old Audi 5000 to the tubes, so I can use the heated leather power seats I saved from that parts car. Mmm, heated seats in a plow truck! Sweet. I'd better test the seat heaters before doing any real work, though. OK, that plan has been shelved due to the height of the Audi seats. They will just sit too high to work properly.

Here are the seats I'll be using, along with a center console storage bucket thing for my chains, etc., and some assorted used Audi seat belts I might install, since the ones in the truck are a bit clunky to operate:

I test fitted all the parts and bolts, made the holes for the seat mounting larger so I could use all four bolts and welded some bits of 1/4" steel with 3/8" holes in them to reinforce the bottom of the tubes. I got lazy and used some spray "rusty metal primer," we'll see how that holds up! Then I painted them with some old VW color matching red paint. Before installation I cleaned up the truck floor a bit, using POR-15 on any rust I could find, and slapping some random paint over some of it. Here they are installed in the truck:

One nice "feature" is that they are a bit higher than the old bench seat, so I can now see the speedometer in the all-important 30-60 mph range over the steering wheel! Yes, those are chrome metal plugs in the end of the steel pipes.

You can see the Audi inner seat belt buckle installed at the far right. However, the belt spools I had wouldn't mount up nicely - as far as I could tell in my paint fume altered state. I may put the old ones back in, although the center buckle parts don't stand up on their own - the bench used to hold them in place. I am also looking into various aftermarket, supposedly "OEM fit" seatbelts - and a new molded carpet.