Joined: Mar 22, 2017 Posts: 301 Location: Great Mills, MD
Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2018 1:33 pm Post subject: M38A1 Driver Seat Mods for a Semi-Tall Person
Hi Guys,
Ok.......were men all about 5 feet tall back in the 50's....or did only submariners drive jeeps? I'm 6"1' and can't drive my A1 with the current seat. Never mind that the accelerator pedal is tiny and almost directly under the brake pedal.......my knees in are my throat!
So I started looking at the seat frame and cushions yesterday. I can modify the frame a bit, but the biggest improvement comes from a much thicker bottom pad and removing the rear pad. I'm guessing I'm going to look a bit stupid with my head sticking over the top of the windshield, but I'm bald and having a nice breeze blowing over my noggin' in the summer might be nice. Do they make an SPF 100?
I picked up a spare driver's seat frame for cheap at a meet last year, as well as another bottom half of a frame for a couple bucks........so I don't have to mess with my original frame (although it looks like every vendor has warehouses full of NOS seat frames), so they're not rare). Looks like I have about an inch of space between the rear of the seat frame and the rear inner fender well. That's if I crush the bottom round tube of the seat back flat. I only have 1/2 inch of clearance if I don't flatten it. I could either cut the two frame tubes that form the seat back frame and extend them an inch or I could slide the frame intact all the way back. I looked at slotting the seat frame's feet to allow it to slide back a bit, but there's not enough meat on the feet to allow that. Nothing a welder and some metal won't fix, but it will be easier to just tweak the front legs and the rear outboard leg with a long pipe. The rear inboard leg (which is just two pieces of flat stock, will have to be cut and re-welded.
For cushions a thin seat back seems to be no problem. But for the bottom cushion I'm going to have to do some fiddling. My current seat is just a hunk of foam maybe 2 inches thick with a black vinyl cover. I assume the previous owner had a "belly clearance" issue and needed the thin foam cushion, but dropping lower in the seat moves your legs closer to the pedals, so he must have been a little "short for his weight, so to speak". So I yanked that and installed the later coil spring set with a blanket on top for a starting point. That's definitely a step in the right direction, but I'd like another 3 or 4 inches of cushion height on top of that. Yeah, I know it's going to look weird with such a high cushion, but taking a hacksaw to my shins is just not going to work long-term. For a seat cover I found some NOS M715 covers for cheap on ePay. They measure 15x18, which is the same size as the coil spring pack, but look a little longer in the sides. So maybe they might fit perfectly. If not I can have make the seat cover sides longer with canvas gladly donated by an old army pup tent half.
Seems like a lot of work for what I would expect is a pretty common problem. Anybody "been there, done that" who wants to share their ideas?
The MB's & CJ2A's were a helluva lot worse for a 6 footer. The 3A and the M38 improved the issue by chopping some of the front of the left wheel house off and tilting the seat back further aft. You could move on that idea by chopping some of your left wheel house front end off.
Otherwise do what we all do. Put both knees in your armpits, set your left foot out on the left doorsill and enjoy the ride. _________________ Wes K
45 MB, 51 M38, 54 M37, 66 M101A1, 60 CJ5, 76 DJ5D, 47Bantam T3-C & 5? M100
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