We are going on an extended trip, wife likes to nap, asked if I could get her seat to lay flatter. Has anyone modified the mech pass seat to lay flat?

2001 f350 cclb drw

 

Modifying the seats to lay flatter was a popular mod back in 2001, when your truck was new.

Back at that time, I glanced at a number of different threads where forum members chronicled their seat modification, which involved sawing or grinding off a metal component inside the seat recline mechanism.

But it has been at least 22 years since I have read of it being done, and I would not be able to link those threads without searching, which you can of course do on your own.

I'm just posting to let you know that it can be done, and has been done by others.

 

ill try to search again

 

Gonna be the dork here (because I can't say certain words), but let the dog/kid sit up front and have the wife lay down in the back seat?

 

A friend of mine's brother died that way. He was napping in the back seat, while his wife was driving. She lost control of the vehicle (while towing a bumper pull trailer). She was wearing a seatbelt and walked away, physically unscathed, emotionally devastated.

Occupant safety was the reason Ford limited the recline... so that occupants would not sublimate under the seatbelt in a forceful enough collision.

Ford later used a similar argument to make all headrests tilt forward... to reduce whiplash... and in so doing made headrests uncomfortable to the point where in some Fords I would have to remove the head rests and install them backwards just to be able to sit in the car.

The twisted irony inherent in the earliest Super Duties not allowing occupants to recline the seats more than 45 degrees... is that Ford now offers "lay flat" seats in present day Super Duties... for an extra charge.

If I get some time this weekend, I'll help you search for threads from the 2000 to 2002 era when folks were frustrated about not being able to simply recline the bucket seat as much as any other automobile or truck with bucket seats or captain's chairs at the time.

 

Another trick to get the feel of a better recline is to raise the front two legs with spacers.

 

As previously promised, I set aside some time this weekend to do a search myself for threads related to revising the front seats of 1999-2003 era Ford Super Duties to recline more.

The original threads from 2001 were lost, due to that forum's (not FTE) then new corporate administrator's assumption that older threads were no longer relevant because of their age, and thus did not need to be saved.

One member, however, named Ryan Arthur (ryaneverk2), just happened to have saved some posts offline, at some point between 2001 and 2005, as he describes in his 2006 post below:





Because ryaneverk2 had saved the foregoing three posts offline, and then reposted them in 2006, these three quotes are all that remain of the original much more comprehensive threads, that included pictures and active discussion, that was lost when the archive of posts made prior to 2003 ended up being purged.

Over the 18 years since Ryan reposted his saved copies, many of the posts on this topic found on all other forums, have reposted what Ryan saved, just as I have done here.

But I'm going to go a bit further and add other posts of interest related to modifying the seats to recline, from a variety of threads. These other threads usually answered the question by someone posting a link to the original threads where this modification was hammered out by the community back when these trucks were new... but all those links with the answers are dead, because the archive was removed.

So only ancillary comments offered to augment the dead links remain, but they are worth including for the reiterive echo effect that offers assurance that the modification is doable, as well as for the heads up on the potentially unfavorable risks.






The "next post" that SmokeyWren was referring to is unknown, because the link in that thread was to an older thread that was part of an entire compendium of thead archives that were eliminated when that particular website's corporate ownership changed forum software vendors.



That's all the time I have for now. The sun just peaked out again after a torrential rain, and I need to get outside and get to work.

With what I have posted above, you have enough key word combinations to continue your own search with fruitful results.