I want to fit an infant car seat (rear-facing) in the back seat of my extended-cab full size pickup. The best place for this seat would be in the rear middle, however my truck (2004 Chevy Silverado Extended Cab) has a bench seat in the front (the drivers seat and the passenger seat move, however the middle front seat does not move at all) and because the front seat does not move the infant seat cannot be installed properly in the rear middle. My goal is to remove the front middle seat- I was curious, has anyone done this and is it difficult? Any advice would be helpful!
You might check into some Tahoe or Suburban front buckets from the same vintage (if they had buckets, which I think they did). The mounting points may be the same. You also need to make sure the place you want to install that car seat is an appropriate place according to the manufacturer of the car seat. I just bought a new one for my three year old son and actually learned a lot I didn’t know about them by reading the manual that came with it.
It must be just bolted down to the floor separately. You may have to unbolt the other two to get access to the bolts but don’t see why it can’t be done. The carpet may not be finished under there or there might be wires or other stuff under there but only way is to just take a good look at it with a light. I used to unbolt my passenger bucket seat if I had to carry a lot of stuff inside the car and it was about a 5 minute job.
Why would you not place a rear facing infant seat in the front where you can observe the infant in times of stress ?We had this debate before, and good points where brought up concerning infant positioning for tending them as long as the front air bag can be turned off.
This infant / child car seat stuff has gotten completely out of hand…
Consider first, will the rear seat have the anchor points so the infant seat can be properly installed? Next, when said infant weighs in at about 15-20 lbs will your back be able to handle the loading and unloading?
If you still want to proceed, get a flashlight and determine if each seat (passenger and driver) is installed separately? If so, there should be 4 distinct mounting points per each seat and a connector under each seat for power seats and heated seats. If you don’t see individual mounting points then perhaps GM installs the front seat as a single unit. If it is a single unit then the only replacement is another single unit that has a console in place of the middle seat. I’d say if it is a single unit you are SOL.
If the seats are individually mounted then there should be a way to remove the center section. It is possible body shops have done this to repair wrecks, and car stereo shops remove seats and interior sections to install fancy stereo systems. It shouldn’t be too hard to crawl around under there and see what your options are in this case.