I picked up a 3rd row seat out of a 2002 Suburban last night for $100, has the built in 3 point seat belts, been looking for one for a while 'cause my kids are still little and their car seats require it. So now I'm trying to figure out what I'll do about mounting them.

I imagine the Suburban had recessed brackets on the floor like mine does for the rear mounts ('86 k5). So now I'm calling junk yards looking to see if any of them have Suburbans or I'd imagine a Tahoe or Yukon for these mounts. I could easily make striker bars, but the problem is the seat would sit way too high and I can't see out of my rear-view mirror.

Anyone have experiance with this? If not I plan on taking pics and doing a write up so hopefully sometime down the road others can benefit.








As you can see the rear isn't too high, but the front is considerably higher. I'll see what I can do over the weekend.

 

post pics, i wouldnt mind seeing this build. youre just gonna have to cut, drill, and weld away to get what you want. i put power leather volvo seats in my 86, took alot of hours

 

Ok so the plans have changed a bit. Found out the reccessed mounts stopped in '99. '00 and later (think to 2006 or current) use on the floor striker bars. So I removed the rear spring latch from my old bench seat, and will weld that to the frame of my new seat. I went to Lowes last night and bought some goodies to fab up some front seat mounts, that will kinda of work like the OEM front seat mounts, but will be custom fabricated. Bought some flat stock, angle iron, two heavy duty door hinges with springs built into them so they close by themselves, rubber hose, pcv pipe (front part of the frame is round, other three sides are square stock) and some 1 1/2" exhaust hangers u-bolts. Going to think of the plans a little more, maybe go out and purchase some square stock, and hopefully should start tomorrow.

Here's the bottom portion of the bench, dissassembled, upside down. The round bar is the front.


I removed the latch from the old seat, haven't decided yet if I will weld it on the bar, or due to how the front mounts may line up since this seat is longer (deeper) than stock, I may weld a piece of square stock in front of the bar, and weld the latch to that, or cut that part of the frame out, weld in square stock to form a 'U' in a sense, since the latch has to be able to lift upwards. I'll figure it out.


I like arm rests so I'm going to clean the old ones up, reupholster them in as close to the same color and mount them to my seat.


Guess my truck feels sorry for all the work I have to do to it, so it helps out where it can. 25 year old seat cushion change from my old bench seat.

 

seems like the good way to go by keepin the frame