924S Rear Seat Conversion to Storage/Parcel Shelf (Done!)

[irish44j]

EDIT: made some more related stuff, skip down to post from 12/23/18 if you're interested

I know I'm not the first to do this of course, but anyhow here's my take on the "rear seat delete." Since this is my road-trip car and not a track car, I decided to not just delete the rear seat, but to turn the whole area into a useful storage and gear area.

I removed the rear lower seat, and stripped the cushions off the seatback, which is the only part I am re-using since it's the easiest way to keep fold-down capability. Then made some cardboard mock-up pieces. Then I cut some wood and made some brackets, using the seat belt bolts as the primary mount for the "front" piece as well as some aluminum angle pieces bolted to the front lip of the lower seat base.







For scale of depth/size..



I got a $15 roll of cheap Amazon.com black unbacked carpet. It's not great, but it stretches pretty well and will hopefully hold up. if not, it wasn't expensive. First carpeted the interior area, and used some old harness eyebolts I had sitting around to give me tiedown points for gear, water/fluid jugs, or whatever I put in there.





Then I padded the old seatback piece (not sure why, in retrospect, but whatever...) and got out my 3M carpet adhesive and electric staple gun and did some basic upholstery. And this is how it all came out. I added a cargo net, some tie-down eyes, and some other stuff that I figured would come in useful as well..

The seatback looks a bit lumpy here, but it should level out a bit over time I think..



I also plan to re-mount a rollout cargo cover to the back of it...



I wanted to be able to fold down the seatback in case of carrying something long, but also wanted it to be a "back brace" for stuff on the parcel shelf. So I double-hinged the storage compartment onto the bottom of the seatback (rather than to the car itself), allowing it to slide forward and let the original seatback fold down..



Hell, I'm 6 feet tall and can even lie down on it lol

[Wellwood]

Well done!

[curtisr]

Very nice.

[PDX-944]

I was gonna say, in a pinch you could still sit back there! Probably has more butt room than factory. Nice, simple work

[v2rocket_aka944]

great work.
this is why i've held onto my "upper seat back" over 10 years after removing it from the car.
i just re-covered the lower seat cushion in matching carpet to keep the sound deadening.

are those eye bolts so you can bungee-cord your kids in a pinch?

[DannoXYZ]

Awesome! May have to do that and model it after the factory option item. Would qualify me for carpool with 2 people in car...

[irish44j]

After building the cargo bay/shelf to replace the rear I wanted to build something to make sure cargo sitting there (cooler, in particular) didn't end up in the front seat in the case of hard braking. So I headed to Home Depot to look at various materials and get ideas, and ended up picking up a 3-foot section of electrical conduit and a pair of 90* curve pieces, plus a few big washers. After stripping the galvanizing off the ends, did some quick welding to make a bar with curved legs. Then used a pair of large washers as feet.





Painted it up, and after a bit of measuring, installed it....



The idea with this is threefold:*

First, to hold cargo back. It perfectly fits my cooler and two of the small HDX bins from Home Depot, so that's one option. Or whatever else I end up putting there.



Also wanted to make sure it wasn't too wide to stop the "cargo bay" lid from raising all the way.



And had to position it so that my seatback can still fold down fully in case I need to carry any larger cargo back there



So, mission accomplished. A $6 project

[PHillary]

Nice!!!

[pfarah]

I like it, great job.

[curtisr]

+1