Dodge Ram MegaCab bench seat in an Econoline

[my3kids]

Here's another solution for those wanting/needing bench seating with headrests. My first choice was to locate Sprinter seats like Silver350 and TwoVans but I could never find them and when I did the guy was asking $950. Ouch. The big upside is that the shoulder belts are integrated on the Sprinter seats. And LATCH connectors for all 3 seating positions.

By dumb luck while eBay surfing I came upon a bench seat from a Dodge Ram MegaCab. MegaCabs are huge and the resulting bench has 3 headrests, has LATCH for all 3 seating positions, the middle seat has an integrated shoulder belt, the thing reclines, folds and kneels. Its pretty cool and weighs easily two times the weight of a normal Ford bench, approx 140lbs.

I've been looking for a replacement bench for quite some time as my 3 kids are still kinda young and I wanted to keep their necks safe in a severe accident. Just about all of the crew cab bench seats do not come with the center headrests and shoulder belts until I accidentally stumbled onto the MegaCab bench seat. The other problem was trying to mount a crew cab bench .. I used rectangular 1in x 1.5in and 1in x 2.5in .125 hot rolled steel, 7/16in grade 8 fasteners and the existing 8 threaded welded nuts where row 3 would've mounted. No new holes needed and I'm using row 3's seatbelts for the outside seats .. with Ford seatbelt receptacles. The Dodge ones are still there, I just rotated them away 180 degrees.

Anyways, you can find them on eBay. I didn't ask where the guy got it from as he also had a leather one. The freight on it was more than the item and since I purchased mine a couple of years ago the prices have doubled.

Anyways, below are some picts. The bench is centered and clears the fuel filler. (I may have goofed on the pict attachments, I have full size picts that I could send if anyone is interested.)

The seat back is somewhat taller than the Ford bench so I removed the headrests for now as my kids don't need the headrests yet.




Here's the 60 portion folded:




And here's the 40 portion kneeled:




Enjoy,
Ray
06 E350 RB
06 E350 Quigley V10

[shenrie]

nice work! looks like it was meant to be there.

ive got all kinds of hours logged sitting on a megacab bench and the thought of putting one in the van never even entered my mind.