Rocker Bottom Seats

[Minuit]

Alright, so here's the deal. I have tilting Laredo seats in the '91 right now on the correct MJ bucket brackets. I know where I can find a set of seats with the rocking chair feature that came on earlier XJs. I also know that the rocker, which is a part of the seat slider, adds height to the seat. How much taller would this make the seat? Looking over some past threads, the answer varies from "a couple of inches" to "I'm 5'1 and my head touches the roof". Does anyone have measurements? For reference I'm 5'11 and I have plenty of headroom with the current setup. I'm very happy with my current seats, I just think the rocking chair feature would be neat. I'm willing to modify things to make the rocking chairs work if necessary if this is even worth it to do.

[schardein]

I have the rocker seats in my 91 XJ, and they are cool.  They came from an 86 XJ.  I also have a spare set.  When I switched to buckets in the MJ, I looked at using those mounts.  Obviously you would have to use the MJ base and adapt the rocker/seat rails.  I wanna say there was a height difference but also the seats would be offset.  Can't remember if it was inboard or outboard.  In the end it was to much work and not easily doable.  I'm super busy these days, but I might be able to look at everything this weekend.

[ParadiseMJ]

I'm 5'11" too, and scrawny, they were too tall for me.  I hit my head on the door jamb just about every time I got in.  I found myself having to scooch down to look out the windshield.  From the outside of the truck it looked like I was 6'6". They were miserable.  I got another pair out of a two door for 25 bucks...so much better.

[Minuit]

That's not good news. I'm no stranger to swapping seat tracks around, so that wouldn't be an issue. I assume the floor pedestals are shorter on the rocker seats to make up the difference?

[schardein]

I think that was the case, and I think there was an offset that was built into the seat somehow, that would not be accounted for if you directly swapped over the seat tracks.  I just looked and apparently I didn't get any pics when I did my seat swap.  I'll try to get some measurements/pics this weekend.

[Minuit]

Much appreciated. If that's the case then if I really, really wanted rocking chair seats, I suppose I could cut down and re-weld the brackets to lower the height (although that would obviously destroy a set of MJ bucket seat brackets. I might use a set from a bench for experimentation if I were to do this). I'm interested as to the offset though.

[HOrnbrod]

Dumb question here regarding the XJ "rocker" seat tracks. Since the MJs never came with these, are you guys swapping the MJ pedestals to the XJ rocker seat brackets? Just curious...........

[Minuit]

If my understanding of the way the rockers mount is correct, yes. The way I remove the sliding seat bracket is to grind off the "stop" rivets and pull the rollers out.

 

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[Strokermjcomanche]

I'm 6'0 and had the 2 door xj rocker seats in my MJ for a SHORT while , my head rubbed the roof and it was very annoying . I found a nice pair of Comanche specific buckets and never looked back .

 

Yes Don , I used my bench seat lower brackets on the bottom of the xj rocker bottoms .

[HOrnbrod]

Thanks Adam. I've thought they might be a neat option too, but since I'm also 6' tall, I'll move on to thinking about other options...

[Minuit]

 

Here's the underside of a complete rocking chair assembly. My idea involved shortening the legs of a MJ bucket pedestal to keep a similar seat height. The problem is that the rear legs of an MJ seat pedestal are really short to compensate for the MJ's sloped floor pan. If I remember correctly an XJ pedestal had much longer legs in the rear than an MJ pedestal. I still can't find anywhere how tall the rocking chair assembly is, but my guess is "taller than the rear legs of an MJ seat pedestal" which means modifying an MJ pedestal wouldn't maintain the current seating position - it might be more tolerable, but still higher. If someone knows the height of the rocking chair mechanism we would know for sure.