Replaced my tractor seat.

Based on the title, that doesn't sound like much of a project, but believe me, it was.

My tractor seat has been in disrepair ever since I bought the tractor 4 years ago. It has been getting worse and worse and for the last year or so it has been more like riding a bucking bronco than riding a tractor. Cathy was helping me with a minor repair of the steering a week ago and I needed her to sit on the tractor and turn the steering wheel while I put the pitman shaft in and when she went to sit down she almost fell onto the floor of the tractor so I figured I really needed to break down and replace the seat.

My tractor had somewhat of a hard life before I got it, so I'm not sure what happened to the seat to break it in the first place, but the factory parts to repair/replace it were over $500. You can buy a complete new seat at Tractor Supply for $100 so of course that was the option I went for first.

I knew it would possibly take a little extra work and maybe even some drilling in the floor of the tractor, but the aftermarket seat even looked a little more comfortable than the stock seat so I thought it would be worth it. After getting the seat home and checking it out I found a problem. The seat was too tall.

Here's a picture of the stock seat next to the one I bought at Tractor Supply. It doesn't look like that much difference, but it was. The distance from the floor to the base of the stock seat was 5" and the distance from the floor to the base of the new seat was 9". That 9" gives plenty of room for a suspension to improve the ride, but it put my head into the canopy of the tractor and knees into the steering wheel. It was not going to work no matter how many holes I drilled.

Here's another picture of the bottom of the stock seat. I didn't do anything to bust it up or anything, just set it on the floor and you can see how bad of shape it was. I had pieced it back together before and it stayed for a while, but it was pretty much beyond repair now. I may hold onto it and practice my non existent welding skills on it sometime as there is a metal bar that is broken and missing that holds the suspension parts in place.

After looking around online, and posting on a tractor discussion board, I finally found a nearly identical seat to the one at Tractor Supply at http://www.agrisupply.com/ that was only supposed to be 4" between the base instead of 9" like the one from Tractor Supply. The stock seat was 5" so I was thinking the new seat would work perfect. Well there was a little bit of false advertising, the seat was 5.5" from the base to the bottom of the seat, but I thought it would still work. 2 hours and plenty of drilling and creative thinking later I had the seat installed. It is still a little bit higher than the factory seat when it is all said and done. I think it will work though. I have to mow the yard this weekend so I should find out for sure pretty quick. It will be interesting to see how much different it rides when there is actually a suspension in the seat vs. in the past when every bump I hit went straight up my spine (and there are lots of bumps when you are running a tractor).

Oh well, not very exciting, but not very many of my posts ever are!

Nathan