2nd row change to Capt. Chairs?

[TRUBRIT]

I was reviewing the threads on the front seat and 2nd row seat reclining modifications. Has anyone done or looked at replacing the 2nd row bench seat with two Captain chairs out of an Escalade? You could get them reupholstered to match the Hummer interior. Don't know whether you would still have the ability of folding them if you wanted to put a lot of gear in the back. Looking to improve comfort for friends on long trips.

[Tex_h2]

That's an idea....can't you just replace the second row with the same setup in the front....same seats and center console??? You would lose the ability to fold them...

[TRUBRIT]

Should be able to, but I did not figure you would be able to locate front seats from an H2. Now Escalades and Tahoes, etc. have Captain's chairs as an option. You would have to make/modify mounting plates or brackets. If you mounted each seat slightly inboard, you would be able to recline fully as this should clear the plastic covers over the fenders. Just an idea I want to look at.

[Adam in CO]

That would be cool.

[JoeHummer]

That would be really cool. Let us know if you do the mod.

[HUMMERcustoms.com/TAZ]

We did the mod winter of 05, 06. Look for pics in the picture section. If you do not see it or they do not show up well let me know and will get Dragon to put some pics in this thread. We have been showing it in contest 06 and 07 blowing minds. You will not be able to get H2 seat or escalade as the salvage market has them sold before they get them on the lot. Best thing is to use captains from a Silverado truck as we did and when we had them covered by our sponsor from katzkins you could not tell the difference. Katzkins has most any mounting bracket to bolt down a non H2 seat into the H2 especially the rear seat position.

We also buillt a center console to go between the new rear captains and it flows to tie in with the front console. I could get Dragon to list all the mods, which would be very long, that we have done and if there are any questions on some you could ask. The rig between what Dragon and I have invested my H2 then Dragon's shop labor plus the more than half of cost by sponsors the rig has about $125,000 in it. We are going to do more this spring furnished by some new sponsors like Wildwood brakes as it looks good that they will go with us to be in their SEMA booth in Oct. 2008. We have a new paint offering from 2 sponsors that want to be on the rig so it will get it's 4th paint job including factory after first of year. In the end I cannot guess what the rig will have had invested in it by the time it is retired but, I do not see me getting rid of it.

I'm working with one of the best race car building shops in a large region to get them into making the transfer from auto tranny to standard 5 spd. with manual 2WD or 4WD select transfer case, It has been done I'm just looking at moving to market it on a larger scale to the H2 world. You would not have to worry about blowing trannies anymore. It will cost a whole lot less to do this conversion than doing a diesel conversion.

Check and see if pics are in the pic section. Should be some there. The guy we work with on interior mods is who told us about what heaters to use for front seat, well they would work on rear captains as well, instead of tryng to spend to much time cutting them out of H2 factory front seat covers.

Good Luck,

TAZ

[Tex_h2]

Taz.....I like the seat design on your webpage


Here are a pair of seat off ebay.....

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/00-06...QQcmdZViewItem

[TRUBRIT]

Taz, Thank you. I figured someone had to have done this. Any info you can send me would be appreciated. I will check the pic section and see if I can find them. I will check Katzkins for the hold down brackets. I have no problem fabricating what I need also.

[TRUBRIT]

Taz, very nice. Only found the one pic of the Captain's chairs. If you have any showing the mounting and the recline position it would be appreciated. If I am correct, you should be able to position them so you can recline without interference from the plastic over the wheel wells?

[HUMMERcustoms.com/TAZ]

I have to estimate that you should be able to recline some with rear wheel well enclosure. The rear storage area of the SUV is raised up some so may hinder reclining some.

In our case we built custom sub enclosures with 4 12" subs. When we decided to go ahead and do the rear captain seat deal we had to lock our seats with very little reclining ability or they would have been taking off expensive paint, shaping of enclosure , and labor already spent. We double checked thinking the next time we do the custom enclosers we would see if the design could be changed to recline the rear captains more. If you have two big subs on each side like ours we have gotten all the recline you can get. If you get smaller twin subs or go to just 2 large subs one on each side we can design them so more reclining is possible.

The seats picked also make a little difference when building sub enclosers. Silverado are a little narrower so fit is adjusted to get a tighter fit towards middle if you want except we used the space for console. I would suggest using Silverado because you can get those seats for allot less than H2 or Caddy seats. Save enough to pay for Katzkin covering. We used the factory seat belts that hang of the H2 wall that were for bench seats. We plugged the shoulder seat harness hole where they come out of the seat themselves. We just all agreed it would be easier this way than trying to cover the hole that would have been left in the side liner.

I do not know much else I can offer. Dragon maybe could offer a little more maybe not. Buy Sliverado seats local or on Ebay. We had a little hard time finding ours.

Good Luck!!

TAZ

[TRUBRIT]

Taz, thank you for the feed back. I will be looking further into this as it seems a worthwhile mod.