87 Chevy Crew Cab 4x4 Converion/Cummins swap

[DieselRat]

Good deal and thanks for the pic. Added to my to do list.

[DieselRat]

IM BACCKKK

Well sort of! Had a nice little warm up last week so decided its time to tear back into the truck. Been driving it a lot, other than a little steering slop its running awesome. Over the winter I picked up a set of 2015 chevy truck seats to put in. Also going to redo all the plastics, radio, carpet, headliner and dash pad to update everything and get away from the vintage red/burgandy interior. So As of now, everything minus the dash is stripped from the truck!





and heres a mock up of the seats just so I could get an idea with where I am at and what I gotta do! I think instead of cutting out and lowering the floor I am going to just deal with them sitting a tad higher. My floor is absolutely perfect, no rust and perfect factory paint. I would hate to cut and weld new floors and have to worry about rust forming in the future!! So basically I cut off all the mounting gear off the bottom of the seat rails and mocked up here the front seat is maybe only and inch higher than my bench was (plus I plan to fix my wobbly stock tilt column and get rid of the straight column which will free up some leg room.





managed to get most of the interior plastics painted this week while it was still warm. This weekend I plan on working on the brackets to get the front seats mounted in place. More updates to come.

[daddyjeep]

Those seats look good in there. What color are you going with since you are getting rid of the red.

[Clrussell]

Seats looks great. More pics of them?

[MTCK]

Those seats look right at home!

[DieselRat]

Everything is gonna be black inside. I bought the seats on a whim hoping they would be close to the right size and all and I was way right. They fit perfect even keeping stock seat belts in place. I will post more pics and updates this weekend whenever I get to leave work

[hick]

Are those crew cab, or extended cab seats? They look better then GMT 800 seats Imo. Nicely done

[lower50's]

Nice seats is the front center a seat as well?

[DieselRat]

Hick: I believe the listing said they were from an ext cab truck. They certainly arent shorty rear seats like most ext cab seats though. I actually almost bought a set of gmt seats, mostly because I have seen people put them into older crews. So thinking it may be the easier way out I almost did that. The heck with easy, these seats are 10X nicer and being only a year old they are firm and in awesome shape


Lower50: yes there is a jumper seat in the middle with tons of cool storage compartments and whatnot.


Managed to get brackets and all made up for the 2 front seats so they are mounted tight. Tonights supposed to be slightly warm so I plan to at least get the center console brackets made and maybe start on the rear. Only issue really I see is going to be where the console is cut out for the trans tunnel in the newer truck. Its either going to leave a bit of a gap along the floor (which wont really be horrible looking) but its gonna be a junk collection spot. I MAY made a slight bulge in the tunnel to match up to the contour of the console. Not sure yet. Kind of hard to see how its all going to look when the carpet is in there. Certainly going to hide some brackets and whatnot.

[DieselRat]

Cold, warm, cold, warm. Weather really sucks here lately! I got one more nice night tonight to get some work done before we get hit with snow and mess this weekend!

Started working on the rear seats. Of course there are roadblocks, but nothing too major. Trying to do this all without hacking up the floor, especially in the back being that the fuel tank is right below the rear bench. SO basically I am making a square frame that will bolt in and the seats will bolt to that, at least thats the plan, and the frame with be made into an under seat storage area. (at least it sounds good)

Here are a few more pics of the seats to get an idea on how they look/fit. The rear bench fits PERFECTLY inside the factory floor mounted seat belts.







Rear seat is sitting on the floor in the pic, it will be much higher when its mounted. This was just for bracket position mock up.

[COS399]

Nice score! They look just like the ones in my 2015 CC and look like they belong there.

[DieselRat]

Heres some progress on the rear bench mount/floor storage compartment. Then it got cold, and snowed, so I guess thats all thats going to happen this weekend!

[lower50's]

Nice idea with the storage. The weather has been like a yo-yo up here too.

[DieselRat]

Got a half day to work on in monday before the latest winter showed up. Was actually nice and sunny out! So I got the frame done, ready to bolt in, set the seats on it to see how the height was, and I hit my head on the roof. So rather than hack up my floor I'm going to redesign the mounting brackets to drop it down a couple inches and then we will be finally getting somewhere. Likely wont happen for a couple weeks now that everything is frozen solid!

[daddyjeep]

Post up some dimensions of your seat brackets when you get it dialed in. I am really liking those seats in there and will have to start finding me a set. My dad had a 14 chevy with the same seats and they were pretty nice.

[87max]

seats look great, do the rears fold flat?

[Lawdog5956]

I really like your progress. I currently have a 1976/84 Crew with a twin 12v in it and I have an extra 1982 crew 2wd dually that I am thinking of converting. I have acquired all the 4x4 brackets, TC, and front drive shaft. I am waiting for a deal on a dana 60. I do have a 1980 K30 dually to take all measurements off of. Currently it sits on an 8in lift. I think the Superlift springs are junk. They are stiff and they don't offer a decent ride. I know they are 8" lift springs with a cummins above them, but dang they are rough. I saved up for months and I finally bit the bullet and bought a custom set of springs for the front. I need a few more items before I can set my truck to a more manageable 4" lift. I will definitely let you know if they were worth the money.

[DieselRat]

87 max, the actually are an odd configuration....What I mean by that is, the brackets that attach them to the floor are at the rear on the back only, and when bolted down they will fold down, or the seat base will fold up, BUT in the stock setup there are sort of 'loops' that are along the rear wall of the truck that a hook on the back of the seat fits over that keeps the backs from tilting down/rattling around. I will snag a pic of that tonight, not sure what I am going to do for that part just yet.

Anyways made a little progress on the 2 nice days we had, then the 20's blew back in last night! same old story.

So I mounted up the rear as I said and they sat really tall, so it was either cut the seat brackets, or cut my floor. So needless to say I cut the seat base. I find if I sit around and stare at stuff trying to come up with a plan, I get no where. So I just dove in and chopped them off. I initially wanted to bolt them to the underseat box frame I made, but that proved more work than needed so I basically made up some brackets and just welded it all together. So now the seat and the underseat portion are all one piece, would be a real pain to get back out, but at least its not hard mounted.

I will go back and take pics of all my floor mounting brackets when I'm done but heres where I am right now...
In this pic you can see the one side flipped up, and starting to make sides for the boxed part underneath.


top on, this will all be carpeted and sound proofed so it wont be clanking around back there.




Hard to tell in the pic because it was dark out, but I cut everything out to fit the contour of the floor so once the carpet is in it will all blend together as if it was made that way (at least one can hope)

[Lawdog5956]

They look pretty good in there. You said before that your head hit the roof. How tall are you and how much head room do you have now with the brackets cut and the seats welded to the box?

[DieselRat]

I'm 6' I chopped about 3" off the brackets. Wasnt like my head was stuffed into the ceiling before either, it was just if I stretched up it was too close to look normal. Now I've got plenty of room above.

[DieselRat]

Got a lot done this weekend. Finished up all the brackets and adaptation of the seats and console, moved on to sound deadener and carpet. Heres some pics as the weekend went on.





not sure how you other guys have made out, or maybe it was because my truck was originally a small hump truck and I added the tall hump....But nothing fit. It was close, but I woulda thought it would have fit better. Same with the carpet. Its way wide in the back, and the front is just a hair short (width wise) I think after it settles and stretches it will be fine, but sort of a PITA to muscle around vs being able to trim up the edges.









Didnt get a pic but I managed to boost the seat box up and get the carpet underneath so its a nice smooth transition there with carpet in the flooring of the storage area. Not sure what I am doing with the box exterior just yet.

[DieselRat]

not sure why those are crooked, I saved them right side up in photobucket...ya well. Sorry fellas

[Lawdog5956]

Those seats really look good in there. I have been looking around my area for some.

[daddyjeep]

It looks like you and I had very similar weekends. You just got a little further than I did. I had a friend's kid doing a motor swap in the shop so I kept getting pulled into that as well.

Looks good.

[DieselRat]

Back with another short collage of pictures. Finished up my interior except for my radio, which is supposed to show up today. Got new speakers front and back, recovered my dash with vinyl (which I wont show because it didnt come out as nice as I would have liked) got the carpet all laid down and sills back in, all my interior is painted. Interior lights work, new door strikers, the works. Feels and smells like a new truck inside.





Headliner came out better than I expected. Was a bit of a struggle to get it back inside the cab with the seats already mounted!

Only upcoming addition is to figure out why the front end pops when I turn and why the rear end has a little vibration at highway speeds.