Power Seat
January 11th, 2019, 3:24 AM
#1
Power Seat
My you-pick has a '97 conversion which unfortunately has a tan color interior while my 2500 is grey. Someone took the left front seat out and left the track behind. It had six-way (up and down at front and back plus back and forth) power seats. So I got the idea maybe I should adapt it to my van.
I thought at first that the seats were specific to the conversion, the lower cushion appeared to be not as thick as a stock seat. To me I already sit too high in it, ideally I'd lower the seat a couple inches, so I didn't want it to be taller still, and while the tan seats were nice leather I didn't want to mix up the colors on mine. But then I got a look under the stock seat and it has sort of a skirt to it, the cushion is about the same thickness.
So I bought the track, including the control from the other seat and a long pigtail of wiring. The wires change color a couple times but they're pretty basic, red is positive, green is ground.
Although my seat base is a little different, it was a straight bolt in. The track fit on the base, and the seat fits on the track. The only problem I had was removing the seat from the original track. At the rear, the brackets curve around and give you almost no access to the 10mm bolts. You need a long box-end wrench. Not having one, I just used a cutoff wheel and cut through so I could get to them.
To wire it up I'm going to use a plug that connects to the wiring for the two-way radio this had in it when it was a State vehicle. Otherwise I would run it the same as these leads, out under the hood, as they are heavy wires and presumably draw a decent current. I was able to use jumper cables as a temp hookup to adjust it to position.
I didn't have a lot of time to work the day I did it so I went with this. I know there's other stuff I should do, but the weather isn't cooperating. It had a vibration at speed (65-70) out of the right front, so I took it apart to look and found no obvious issues other than the pads may have been glazed. I swapped a used rotor and changed the pads, and found the spindle nut may have been a tad loose as it spun on two more turns. I went to change the left side pads to match and the wheel refuses to come off. Rusted on. Haven't decided how I want to handle that yet. The right was pretty tight too but I was able to hammer it off.
I thought at first that the seats were specific to the conversion, the lower cushion appeared to be not as thick as a stock seat. To me I already sit too high in it, ideally I'd lower the seat a couple inches, so I didn't want it to be taller still, and while the tan seats were nice leather I didn't want to mix up the colors on mine. But then I got a look under the stock seat and it has sort of a skirt to it, the cushion is about the same thickness.
So I bought the track, including the control from the other seat and a long pigtail of wiring. The wires change color a couple times but they're pretty basic, red is positive, green is ground.
Although my seat base is a little different, it was a straight bolt in. The track fit on the base, and the seat fits on the track. The only problem I had was removing the seat from the original track. At the rear, the brackets curve around and give you almost no access to the 10mm bolts. You need a long box-end wrench. Not having one, I just used a cutoff wheel and cut through so I could get to them.
To wire it up I'm going to use a plug that connects to the wiring for the two-way radio this had in it when it was a State vehicle. Otherwise I would run it the same as these leads, out under the hood, as they are heavy wires and presumably draw a decent current. I was able to use jumper cables as a temp hookup to adjust it to position.
I didn't have a lot of time to work the day I did it so I went with this. I know there's other stuff I should do, but the weather isn't cooperating. It had a vibration at speed (65-70) out of the right front, so I took it apart to look and found no obvious issues other than the pads may have been glazed. I swapped a used rotor and changed the pads, and found the spindle nut may have been a tad loose as it spun on two more turns. I went to change the left side pads to match and the wheel refuses to come off. Rusted on. Haven't decided how I want to handle that yet. The right was pretty tight too but I was able to hammer it off.
Last edited by William Kisselstein; January 11th, 2019 at 3:32 AM.
