Bwiggins1985 and I met up today to swap second row seats. He had a 2009 Suburban LT with a tan leather bench. I had a 2013 GMC Yukon XL SLT with premium tan leather bucket seats or captain's chairs. Premium means perforated leather, heated, and power folding.
Mechanically, the swap was straightforward. There are eight studs in the floor of the body where the seats mount. The captain's chairs use four each. The bolts are 18mm hex bolts. A deep socket driver is suggested. Torque to 45 in-lbf. The bench uses two additional 13mm bolts to hold the underbodies together for increased strength. You'll need every single bolt for crashworthiness, so, don't lose them! Our nuts all had captive washers - no free washers to lose.
But, the devil's in the details, or in this case, the carpets. We thought that we could just switch carpets along with the seats and have everything work out perfectly. We were wrong.
See, GM changed the interior spec of the GMT900 Suburban in 2010. So, there are not one but two possibilities for the carpeting that covers the second row seat hardware and the third row footwell area:
- hard plastic covers, or
- a carpet trim piece with sound deadening material.
The trouble is that, with this change, GM changed how the two piece primary interior carpet works. With the hard plastic covers, the two pieces of interior carpet meet right under the second row. The entire floor is carpeted, the seat frames sit on top of the carpet, and the trim piece protects passengers from injuring themselves on studs.
With the move from the hard plastic covers to the carpet trim piece, the two piece carpets are shorter, and the body floor is bare under the second row.
The carpet trim piece insulates and covers this from sill plate to sill plate, the full width of the vehicle.
Bwiggins1985 gave me his hard plastic cover.
It left a gap in the carpet on each side. For now, I've filled that gap with a custom cut piece of scrap carpet. Long term, I'll want to either obtain the correct carpet, or, put some insulation under the hard plastic piece. Right now it's just a bare floor under that piece.
I gave Bwiggins1985 my carpet and it added thickness to his carpet at the sill plates. He had a tough time getting the sill plates installed. He's going to order hard plastic covers for his captain's chairs.
With the seats being different of course our existing floor mats don't work. We would have gladly swapped but he had black mats and I had tan mats. We each need to modify our existing mats or buy new ones.
I allocated two hours for the swap. That was plenty of time to let us work at a leisurely pace and to research carpet options. 30 minutes for a pro and 60-90 minutes without complications and research is about right.
Really glad I made the change! We have three kids. In every other car we put them three across in row two and open up the back for cargo. Comes in really handy on camping trips. I feel like the buckets are great if you have two or four kids, or bigger kids. But with the buckets we had a bunch of issues:
- daughter had a tough time buckling her booster by herself in row 3. The seat belt buckle is designed to grab the belt when twisted. It's great for installing car seats, but terrible for a little person to do on their own.
- son's rear facing seat was so deep we had to shove the passenger seat really far forward to fit it. Wife didn't have enough leg room.
- not enough cargo space for camping trips.
- can't hear anyone sitting in the third row.
- fights about who sits in the second row.
With these issues solved, we've gladly got three across in the second row.
I did lose power folding and heating in the second row. So what? We'll have car seats in there for at least the next five years. If I'm dead set on a bench with power fold and heat there is one for $2k on eBay two hours away. If I ever want captain's chairs back, I can do another swap, or just buy them. The benches are way harder to find than the buckets.
