Wasted two hours trying to replace the seats in the wife's Dakota. Her driver's seat has a broken latch on the seatback. We found a guy parting out a '02 Dakota R/T (wife's is a '97 club cab 4x4) and bought his seats for $200
(Also told him about TMC and emailed him a link)
The problems began when we realized his center console wouldn't work in her truck because of the 4x4. Then we found out his drivers seat was powered. Not a big deal I figured, because I can provide power to it without much trouble.
Then, today, taking her old seats out I find out they aren't separate units (pass. seat, center, driver's seat). What Dodge did was rivet the damn frame for the console to the seat frames on each side. That made it impossible to put the new seats in without losing the console completely. And, to top it off, I can't get the seats out the door while the truck is in the garage. Had to bolt 'em back in and back it out to the driveway and work on the hill.
Okay, then I get the brainstorm that I could unbolt the new seats from their frames, then bolt them to the frames from the old seats. We'd lose the power mechanism for the driver's seat, but it'd be on the manual frame so it would still slide the way it needs to.
Except... You can't get to the damn Torx head bolts that attach the seat to the frame unless you power the seat to line up the holes, and then disassemble half the mechanism to get access to the bolts. And even then I don't have a Torx bit long enough to reach the rear ones. Arrrgghhh!!
Bolted the original seats back in for now and will start looking for an exact match set next week.
Anyone need dark gray power seats for an '02 Dakota?