The gentleman who sold us his 97 F-350 crew was generously proportioned, shall we say. There's a lot of that going around. He mentioned that he'd lost a lot of weight.

We pulled the seat to find out why my son was feeling some hard objects under his butt, and we found that the foam was decaying and at least one spring was broken from the frame. It had pulled right through the metal frame. We drilled it a new hole and came up with a cheap system to keep the foam from sinking further into the metal support underneath it.

Here you see plastic slats from window blinds. We cut them to length and fit them in the side then slid them in above the metal support under the foam so the foam will stop getting damaged by the metal edges. This should give my son another couple of years while he's saving up money in order to get a better seat in the future.

 

Also found the seat rail cracked in two spots. Won't be able to adjust it much until I find a new one. Welding it would be very delicate...

 

same on my 90, the original owner must've been well over 300, the foam/springs, everything on driver area was a huge hole you'd fall into. I jammed a piece of sheet metal in there and if I recall, a scrap of a 4x4 landscape timber so I wouldn't "fall in". I literally felt like a child sitting in this huge hole.
I recall in college, which was night school and therefore various ages, an older huge guy that drove about a 71 or 72 Cutlass 2 door. He said he was original owner. And, I mean huge. He'd drove it all those years and the driver side springs were so collapsed, the entire Cutlass visibly leaned and sat couple inches lower on that side. This guy was as big as a professional wrestler. And, his head had wore out the headliner right above driver seat. I'd guess he was 6'5" or 6'6' and at LEAST 350.

 

RenoHuskerDU,
Enjoyed reading your thread while listening to Charlie pride, "There's a little bit of Hank in me". Nice repair and my hat goes off to you, showing your son how to use his imagination (resources at hand), a rare find these days. Heard recently on one of the old western shows, "there's nice people in Texas", and that's been my experience. Had the good fortune to work for an old Equipmentman Master Chief (EQCM) early on in my Navy career, he was from Mesquite, TX. A saying he told me once that I'll never forget, "It's not the high cost of living, but the cost of living high". He retired back in 1991, I visited him in 2009 and he passed away a year ago last April. He was known as "Tex" and owned a 1977 F-250. When he couldn't drive anymore, he gave his truck to his oldest Grandson. Years ago he let me borrow his truck back when I had to re-roof our house, I owned a 1988 Ford Ranger at that time. Ya, he sure was a nice person and had a profound influence in my life. The way you described the caliber of the previous owner, well it shows and is indicative you're from Texas, a nice person.

 

Thank you Sir. I wasn't born in TX, but I got here as fast as I could. We're raising Texas children now too. Get by, improvise, reuse, re-purpose.

 

It can be welded. Just make sure its clean.

 

Yeah if I had a nice little wirefed I'd do it. All i have now is sticks, sticks, sticks. I'll get a mig again some day. Used to even weld body seams with one. Had to sell all my power tools when we bailed outa yurrup, wrong voltage and hertz.

 

If anyone figured it out, this is @calvinhg 's truck. As for welding the seat rail, I just tried some E6013 rods on expanded metal and they weld up real smooth at 80 amp.

I wonder if I could do that seat rail now, with those rods.

 

I've had good luck using 3/32 7018 rod at around 70a and using a 1" plate steel as a heat sink. Granted this was at work welding 1/8" thick pieces of sheeting girt together. Best of luck, man!