MJ Bench in Front of XJ

[96XJ9705]

I've read a lot of threads that people want to try it, but has anyone done it? Reason being I've got a family of 6 now and the jeep is our vehicle of choice till the youngest is 5 and we can take quads and bikes through the desert. Any links or experience on completing this seat swap?

Thanks!

 

[VAhasnoWAVES]

Your stuffing 6 people, 4 of which I assume are children, into a 5 passenger vehicle?

 

[96XJ9705]

Your stuffing 6 people, 4 of which I assume are children, into a 5 passenger vehicle?

No, I'm making a six passenger vehicle out of a five and then filling every seat.

 

[96XJ9705]

And 4 of them are 10 years old or younger.

 

[Lowrange2]

Yes, it has been done. It's not difficult. Go for it.

 

[96XJ9705]

Yes, it has been done. It's not difficult. Go for it.

I would like to. We had to take the truck instead of the jeep and we found some places are hard to comfortably drive a full size into.

Any links or pics of the completed projects?

 

[87manche]

the seat bases are different. Swap the XJ bits to the MJ seat and it probably bolts in. Assuming the XJ bases are tall enough to let the bench clear the trans tunnel.

 

[YELLAHEEP]

Yeah, as I recall, the XJ bucket seat mount floor brackets aren't tall enough to get the bench high enough for the trans tunnel.....

I can't find it now, but I thought I'd seen photos of a guy on ComancheClub that put his MJ bench into his DD XJ.

They made bench seats with and without the cut-out for the floor shifter so you'll wanna find that for the XJ. You'd probably also wanna get a bench that has the headrests.... so it'll be from an MJ with a manual and later than '90 to find that combo IIRC.

 

[G2WANIT]

Another option is to keep your bucket seats and stuff another seat between them... that's what I did. I used the center section from a Durango middle-row - the 3-row models have a 40-20-40 split.

It took some slight modification but worked fine:

I'll be posting a detailed writeup in my build thread sometimes this week. I like it a lot and fits the family of 6 just fine. In hindsight I wish I had used a front-row center seat from a 2001ish Tacoma. I was riding in a friends, looks like it would fit and it opens for storage... nice!

 

[Tacedaddy]

^ umm anyone else confused as to what happens to the E brake? do you switch to to the MJ's floor e-brake?

 

[G2WANIT]

I grabbed one out of a ford E350/250 van... I liked that one because it is the press-to-release type. Routed the cable along the door, under the seat and into the trans-tunnel. I chose to cut the stock brackets and weld them in, but you could just as easily bolt them in. You have to relocate the hood release but that was a snap - two screws and you put it under the dash as opposed to on the wall.

Everything works (E-brake better than ever!) and it passed safety inspection no-problem.

Edit to add quick pic of E-brake, you can just see the hood release parallel to the floor:

 

[87manche]

some awesome tech right there. I may relocate the wife's DDXJ e brake to the floor. I was going to use bits from the MJ, but I like that very much, especialy since I won't have to figure out a relase handle in the dash.

 

[G2WANIT]

I posted a full write-up in my build thread about what I did.

Sorry, looks like I broke the links above, I'll try to fix those...

 

[TRAILREADYXJ]

Too bad you're on the other coast, I'd offer to trade my bench for buckets!