seat interchangeability
One of the popular things to do with the pickup trucks is to put different seats in them, and a particularly popular swap is to put bucket seats in the regular cab trucks since they did not come from the factory with buckets. And, a logical place to turn is another Ford truck, like a Bronco or a Supercab as they did come from the factory with buckets. Unfortunately, it isn't that easy as there are two different floor pans - regular cab and crew cab trucks share one, and Broncos and Supercabs share the other. It turns out that both pans are drilled for and accept the bench seat tracks. But, the bucket seat mounts attach to the floor in different spots, and only the Bronco/Supercab floor pan accepts them.
However, there are two approaches to installing Bronco/Supercab buckets:
However, there are two approaches to installing Bronco/Supercab buckets:
- Seat Pan: Starting in '94 Ford used a "pan" to mount the 40/20/40 seats in the trucks. The "pan" mounts to the bench seat holes and accepts the 40/20/40 split bench seat. That pan is a direct bolt-in to the regular or crew cab trucks, and the bucket seats can be mounted to that pan. However, it isn't as straightforward as it might seem at first. Unfortunately the tracks that the 40/20/40 seats mount to won't easily mount to the buckets used up through 1989, and the tracks that the '89 and earlier buckets come with don't easily attach to the pan. However, Diesel_Brad has found that the tracks that come with the 1992 bucket seats will attach directly to the pan. So, some place between '89 and '92 the buckets and tracks changed, and at this point I don't know when that was. In any event, given how hard it is to modify the earlier tracks I'd look for 1992 or later buckets - although I don't yet know how long Ford used those bucket seats.
Having said all that, if you are still determined to use the early buckets, then from my experience the easiest approach is to use the tracks that came with the Bronco buckets and adapt them to fit the 40/20/40 seat pan. I documented how I did it starting with this post in Dad's truck thread on FTE. And Diesel_Brad from FTE showed how he did it in this thread. Either of these ways works, but neither are without some effort.
In any event, here's what the seat pan looks like and how the seats fit in Dad's truck using the pan and the modified Bronco tracks:
- Drill & Shim: In the other approach you'll use the bucket seats and the original tracks plus brackets that came with the seats. But they won't fit the floor of the truck quite right, so you'll have to drill some new holes and shim between the floor and the bracket to get the seats to sit level. And, since the original holes have reinforcement under the floor, you should use large washers under the floor to spread the load in case of an accident. Ozark1 from FTE used this approach and here's what his low-back buckets look like in his truck:
I should also point out that the obvious difference in the seats in Dad's truck and those in Ozark1's truck, meaning the height of the back, makes a difference in whether or not the back hits the rear window. In the picture above the seat is all the way back and clears the glass. But, in the picture below on the seats going in Dad's truck the backs are going to hit the glass when slid fully rearward unless I do something to prevent that. One approach is to not use the wedges that come with the Bronco buckets and tilt the seat backward - which are shown being used in the picture to the right above. Another is just to not tilt the seat back that far with the tilt lever. I don't yet know how I'm going to solve that problem as I've not gotten that far in the build.
