Blackys Bench Bucket bracket bodging blatherings

Post by **Blacky** » Sun Mar 27, 2022 11:24 pm

here we go

Bought a Mazda BT-50 bench bucket seat that i want to install in the ute for long distance stuff seeing as I don't think I am ever going to get the rattler back on the road

, made a start on installing it yesterday .

Like all the other stuff done to the ute, I don't want to modify the ute itself , rather make the bits fit the existing holes so I can undo any changes without getting a welder or spraygun involved.

To that end, I cut up a set of original seat mounts and planned to use them on the donor seat if possible , turns out it wasn't going to be that easy but it wasn't going to be all that difficult either

First up I removed the front seat out of the wagon seeing as it s a whole lot easier to remove then a ute seat plus you can see the back of it to figure out how best to mount it.

The old and the new

I marked the original mounts on the floor of the shed

And looky here , they are exactly the same width

Post by **Blacky** » Sun Mar 27, 2022 11:34 pm

So I wandered up to EKMart and found a pair of old seat mounts and got to work - removed the Mazda ones and sat them side by side on the bench , the original ones have a curve in them , the Mazda ones are straight so a direct fit wasn't going to happen.

So next trick was remove the bases off the Holden runners and adapt the Mazda runners , this involved drilling the Holden rivets out and carefully removing the ends of the Mazda runners with a hand held milling machine.

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Post by **Blacky** » Sun Mar 27, 2022 11:41 pm

Mounting positions were drawn on the bench as well so I could line them up , a couple of extra holes were drilled in the Holden base and the rear brackets were welded onto the Mazda runners , runners bolted back onto the seat and then installed the seat into the wagon.

Height seems OK at the rear , I ran out of time to play with it today as I had some other errands to run. The front is too high with the stock bracket plus it sits at the wrong angle so I am going to need to take a piece out of it and then weld it on. once I am happy with it - then its off to Drews at Northside Motor Trimming for a retrim

Flew out this arvo so had to call and early end to shed time

All in all a bloody easy swap , and once its retrimmed shouldn't look too out of place in there

and will make long days driving to and from Nationals even more pleasurable.

60Special · Post by **60Special** » Sun Mar 27, 2022 11:57 pm

Good job.
I put an early Rodeo one in my sedan before Renmark I think it was. The FB runners bolted up to new holes that I drilled in the seat base. It was easier than I expected.

FbSTDwagon · Post by **FbSTDwagon** » Mon Mar 28, 2022 5:30 am

Nice clean job!

Errol62 · Post by **Errol62** » Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:34 am

Nice work Blacky. Other errands eh? 8 ) 8 )

FB ute fixer upper, EK van on rotisserie

EK283 · Post by **EK283** » Mon Mar 28, 2022 9:04 am

Good stuff Blacky,

I don't know what happens to the time either, work, kids, wife, house then the spare 2 hours you get for the shed is spent looking for stuff !!!!

Bum will be nice and new after a long trip with that seat.

Greg

Wrongway Roger · Post by **Wrongway Roger** » Mon Mar 28, 2022 10:35 am

Well done Blacky on upgrading the seat. I'm using the same seat in Ammo's ute.
I cut 4 base plates and bolted these to the existing mounting points. I did shape these to fit the floor.
Trimmed of some of the Mazda seat mount and sat the seat in position.
Once I have sat my butt on the seat and happy that I had some movement of the seat forward and back, tack welded plates to the seat mount.
Welded, ground and painted black.

: Seat mount.JPG (111.11 KiB) Viewed 1256 times

Hacked up the trim on the original bench seat to fit the Mazda seat.

: Seat side 2.JPG (100.21 KiB) Viewed 1256 times

This mod give a bench seat with pull down arm rest.

Cheers,
Roger

Post by **Blacky** » Mon Mar 28, 2022 4:36 pm

Errol62 wrote: Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:34 am Nice work Blacky. Other errands eh? 8 ) 8 )

Post by **Blacky** » Tue Apr 12, 2022 10:14 am

Did a bit more last night , was going to do it yesterday but the young bloke needed a hand to pull the cab off his HJ45 Cruiser

Excavators are such a useful device

Anyhoo , front mounts needed to be lowered somewhat as the seat was in full boy racer hat backwards mode , measured them up and they needed to be cut like so

Cut and welded , dummy fit and found to be good - aforementioned son nowhere to be found to give me a hand to remove seat for final welding so left for today.

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Post by **Blacky** » Tue Apr 12, 2022 9:57 pm

Brackets finished off,fitted and seat bolted back in , next step is the console, I want to mount it to the seat about 100 mm off the floor, so I don’t need to drill holes in the floor to mount it plus it will move with the seat.

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In the Shed · Post by **In the Shed** » Tue Apr 12, 2022 10:07 pm

Sheer bloody luxury lad ………

Nah looks good Blacky

Errol62 · Post by **Errol62** » Tue Apr 12, 2022 10:21 pm

Cool man!

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gledge · Post by **gledge** » Wed Apr 13, 2022 12:05 am

Brilliant work mate

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Post by **Blacky** » Sun Apr 17, 2022 1:37 am

Got a bit more done today, started the console mount .

I cut off a few of the hogrings to expose the seat frame, then made some brackets to weld to it and glued them on

fbekholden.com