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Ugly Seats Have Been Replaced
Our DX3 has the infamous seats where the covering material is falling apart. The first few years the seats were sorta OK but then started falling apart rapidly during the last 2-3 years. We finally got tired of looking at them & really tired of sweeping the particles off the floor and brushing them from our clothes. Also, I didn’t find the drivers seat to be comfortable – after 30 minutes or so my back would start getting sore.
We talked about some options & decided that spending several hundred dollars to recover the seats we didn’t like wasn’t a good choice. I also couldn’t justify spending $800-1000, plus $200 shipping, or even $3100 per seat. If I were a pro driver that spent 8-12 hrs every day in the seat that might be a good investment, but spending only 5-8 hrs/day 2-4 times a month just wasn’t going to work.
A few weeks ago we went on our first camping trip of the season to Myrtle Beach (KOA - very nice) and while going thru Conway, SC we saw a large pull-it-yourself junkyard. A couple days later we took a trip to the junkyard and spent 2+ hrs looking at a couple hundred cars & most of the seats were somewhere between ugly & really bad. We finally found a decent looking set – the drivers’ seat was a 6 way power + power lumbar, and the passenger was a std manual seat w/ storage cubby below.
It took us ½ hour or so to get the seats loose & then carry them to the office. The total price for both seats was $149. They’re not absolutely perfect, but they are at least 10x better than the originals. What’s really crazy is the new seats are 2 years older and have 120K more miles on them than the original RV seats!
I cut off the support feet on each seat & then welded pieces of Unistrut across the slide rails & then bolted them to the existing air lift mechanism in the cab. If I need to make any adjustments to the drivers’ seat, I’ll plug the power cord temporarily into the cigarette lighter. If I get motivated one day, I’ll run a permanent power line to the seat. I also need to make an arm rest for the passenger seat so DW doesn’t fall out while snoozing.
Overall, we think they look good & the price was right. We're going on another trip in about a week, so then we'll see how well they really work.
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