Review & Install Video
If you've been shopping for replacement seats for your TJ, either because yours are worn out, broken, or you just wanna change up the look of your interior and get a seat that's a little bit more functional, you'll know that the big differentiating factor between after-market seats are whether or not they need an adapter bracket to be installed in your Jeep, and whether or not they recline. Well, this seat here does have unlimited reclining. It does fully recline back, which is a really nice feature. And this will work with your factory seat adapter, so no additional adapters to buy. This comes with all of the hardware and everything necessary to get this installed in your TJ, again, without purchasing another adapter. Sometimes those adapters are over a hundred dollars, so this is going to save you a little bit of money over going with one of the other brands that does require those adapters. In fact, these seats will even allow you to retain the factory fold and tumble feature in your TJ, whether it be on the passenger side or both the passenger and driver, depending on what year your Jeep is, although that will require an additional lever.As far as construction goes, this is going to be a tubular steel frame seat with some metal springs on the bottom, of course, covered in padding, and then an automotive-grade vinyl material over the top of it, of course, as we've said before, available in a couple different colors. And this vinyl material is designed to get cleaned off very, very easily, unlike a cloth would. So if you're hopping in and out of the Jeep, you have a little bit of mud, a little bit of dirt, these seats are gonna come up pretty clean.Now again, these are going to be a version of the Rugged Ridge seats that do have some additional bolstering. And these bolsters are very abrupt, we'll say. They don't have a lot of contouring to them, but they do a really nice job of holding you firmly in the seat. These are also gonna have a cutout for a harness, a shoulder belt if you were to have a harness bar and a cage installed in your Jeep, where you were gonna use that. If not, it does add some additional style that some people do like.And this is going to have an integrated headrest. Some of the other Rugged Ridge seats do have a headrest that's adjustable, it can come up and down. And some are more of a low back that have really a built-in headrest. But again, they are gonna be a little bit lower. So this seat is gonna come up a little bit higher without the adjustable headrests.So I am gonna give the install of these seats a simple one out of three wrenches. It's probably gonna take you around an hour to get these installed. And as I've said a couple of times now, these do not require you to buy an additional bracket. They do have some hardware that you'll use to get these bolted up to those factory seat slides that are in your TJ. Now depending on the year of your TJ, there might be one area where you'll have to do a little bit of drilling, and all you're really doing is removing the threads from the inside of a welded nut, so not a big deal to do. A lot of you are gonna still feel very comfortable doing that. And there might be a little bit of plastic trimming, again, depending on what year your Jeep is. But overall, it's still going to be a one out of three easy install that shouldn't take you more than an hour to complete.Now the first step in this installation is going to be unbolting your factory seat from the floor of your Jeep, and there are four bolts that hold it down. Once you have that seat unbolted, you can set it on a table, unbolt the seat slide from the seat, and then go ahead and follow the instructions to figure out which one of the mounting holes on the bottom of your new seat need to be used to mount the seat to that factory slider, as well as what hardware. Because again, these seats are available for a lot of different Jeeps and a lot of different vehicles, so you are gonna have to sort through the hardware, make sure you’re using the right hardware in the right mounting holes. Once you have the hardware bolted to the bottom of the seat, you'll bolt that factory seat slide to the hardware, and then bolt everything into the Jeep. And again, that shouldn't take you more than roughly an hour to complete with just some hand tools per seat. Now these seats are sold individually, so if you want a matching pair, make sure you pick up two.These Rugged Ridge seats come in at around $283 each, and I don't think that's really a bad price for what you're getting with this seat. Again, you don't have to go out and purchase that additional bracket, which can sometimes be upwards of a hundred dollars or even more per seat, so you don't have to put out that additional money. And even some other seats, like Corbeau, which is going to be a really premium brand. Those seats, for a pair of them, are gonna be around $600 plus the adapters.So for a seat like this that is going to be pretty well built, pretty comfortable, pretty functional, easy to clean, has a reclining feature, doesn't need an adapter, all of those features make it worth the cost, in my opinion. So that's my review of the Rugged Ridge XHD Sierra Reclining Front Seat, fitting all 1997 to 2006 TJs that you can find right here at extremeterrain.com.
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