Bench seat to XJ Bucket Conversion

[Warren99]

Making this to show/document what I did to swap some Cherokee Buckets into my truck. Figured someone else in the future who was confused like I was might find and be able to learn something from this.

 

(89 MJ Bench seat and a pre-97 4 door XJ was used for the buckets, no power seats)To try to sum it up before the pics and explanations, you don't need to take the rails off of either seat. All you have to do is take the floor brackets off and use the ones for your floor. For these, each bracket had at least one rivet and 1 or 2 spot welds on each rail. Obviously you could replace the rivets with more rivets or just a simple bolt and nut, we used 1/4 inch bolts.

This is the rear bracket on the passenger side of the bench seat. One rivet (bottom hole) and two spot welds had to be drilled out.

First pic shows the front bracket on the passenger side of the bench. Once again, 1 rivet, 2 spot welds. Second pic shows the bench with the brackets removed.

On the bucket seats, the front bracket was the same procedure, however the back one has 4 rivet mounting points, one set which is under a crossmember. You could take off 4 bolts and nuts, separating the rails from the seat frame, but not only is this tedious to take off, it's extremely hard and annoying to get back on. Also, you would have to drill the rivets that the crossmember uses to keep the rails aligned. Luckily, the MJ bracket only uses the back set, so by far the easiest, and quickest way is to just simply cut off the rear portion. Once you cut it in half, its just like the previous ones, each rail has 1 rivet but one side has 1 spot weld instead of two. You can cut more of the remaining part of the original bracket than we did if you choose. Once its out of the way, the MJ brackets once again just rivet or bolt right on.

 

^Final picture with MJ brackets on.

 

I feel I should clarify that I'm obviously not an expert and if you wanted to do the same you shouldn't just take your seats out and start drilling and cutting. I tried to give as many details I knew about the type of seats and stuff, because some seats may be drastically different and won't work this way(power seats, seats from a 97-01 XJ). Just make sure you confirm your seats will work for this same idea before you hack something up. As for the purists out there, I'm sorry you had to see this, just don't look at my 4wd shifter .

 

Note that these are from a 4 door XJ. They do not fold forward so it will be hard to get big stuff behind the seat. If you want factory bucket seats and manage to find a 2 door XJ, I would assume this same process would work if you used your MJs bench brackets. 

[Pete M]

very nice work!    only thing I have to add is that the XJ floor bracket change happened in either 95 or 96.  I can't ever remember which. 

[Warren99]

I want to say this is before that then, because I swear this was the same XJ I got sun visor clips from, which means it has to be a 90 or earlier. And even if it wasn't that one, chances are that it was pre-95.

[Minuit]

The seat change happened in 1995.

[Pete M]

I'll be sure to remember it this time   (probably not!)

[zomeizter]

Nicely done dude!

[Warren99]

Probably gonna post it on the for sale thing too but I forgot to mention that I need to get rid of the bench. I don't care about making a lot of money I just don't want it sitting around forever and I don't want to throw it in the dump. Seatbelts work, latches work, obv the floor brackets are gone. Hmu if your interested or want more details.

[Warren99]

Also, should this post stay here or be moved to DIY Projects and write ups?

[Pete M]

I usually let them linger in Tech for a bit before moving them over.    way more eyeballs check Tech than any other subforum. 

[Warren99]

Ah ok, thanks!