After many years of saying, “I need to go buy a pair of PT Cruiser seats for the Scout,” I got a pair today. The weather was as warm as it’s going to get this week (a balmy 50°) so I suited up in some warm clothes, packed a bunch of tools and headed into the brownfields of Crazy Ray’s. I found a total of eight PT Cruisers in the Chrysler section in various states of disassembly. Three had black leather seats but all of them were in bad shape. The other five had gray cloth. I found that there are two seat types in the PT Cruiser: the kind where the passenger seat folds forward and those that don’t. The folding kind are identified by the plastic tray insert on the back. I also found that 2001-2 models have integrated airbags in the side cushions, while the 2003-4 models don’t. Airbags made me nervous so I passed on a beautiful pair of gray seats for a second, slightly dirtier pair from a 2003. They came out with little fuss (13mm bolts in front, 15 in back) and I spent more time on the line waiting to pay than I did pulling them out.
In the garage I pulled the back mounting plate off to expose the whole rail and found that the width does indeed match up perfectly, but of course the front-to-back bolts don’t. I’m going to ask Mr. Scout what he did (drill two new holes or fab up a mounting plate) and which ones he used the original bolts in. My spare seat mounts are a bit janky, so I either have to repair them with some angle iron or buy new/used ones. The other alternative is pulling the mounts already in the truck and examining just how much welding damage they did when they put the GHLS seats in it.
The weather is plunging back down into the freezing cold next week, so this project will get put on hold until springtime.
Santa did indeed send me a donut for the Hi-Lift jack, which makes me very happy to have, and I got the first of the two lighting kits from Amazon this afternoon. Stay tuned for upgrade updates.
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