Been planning on making this for a long time now. I wanted to use a stock seat frame so that it would easily clip in and I could throw the stock two-person seat in when I needed it. Finally found a spare back seat I could cut up via craigslist for $75. I do a lot of wheeling with two passengers, and due to the high cost of an aftermarket bumper with tire carrier and not wanting to bend my tailgate with a 35, this is what I decided to do.

After removing all the stock seat covers and cushions, I started welding and cutting the frame. Sorry, I don't have any pictures of this part, but have some afters:

Lower frame only:



The right side of the lower frame stays completely stock:



I had to get a custom bracket watercut to attach the other side of the backrest to. More on this later. 3/8" should be plenty strong enough:



Where the tire carrier tubes attach to the frame. You can also see the handle I made that releases the floor latch:





The angle that the tire carrier bends in to fit the tire:



Used a Teraflex Spare Tire Spacer to get the bolt pattern perfect, as well as to avoid having to bend the tubes so much. I welded a little "cap" over the top of the tubes to pretty it up:




As for the back rest, I had to shorten that quite a bit. I cut it in half just before the handle to flip the seat down, and used some of the extra tube I cut off to add the vertical bar. I then cut the latch assembly off the driver side I had chopped off and welded it to my new tube:



I had to get creative with the latches that fold the seat down. I welded a handle to the driver side latch, and re-routed the cable from the passenger side to a custom mount on the latch so that you could simply pull one side and have both latches actuate:





An overall view with the backrest frame bolted in:





Mounted in the Jeep:





EDIT: Here is a view with the tailgate shut. I don't lose too much view looking out the back:



Gate open, I still have complete access to the storage cubby:





And a side view of how much room there is between the tire and the gate:



Here is a final view:

 

wow...nice job

 

Right on!!!!!

Great idea, function, fabrication and results. An overall winner in my books

 

THAT'S FUCKING AWESOME!!!

 

Now that's seriously rad. Amazing job!

 

You're the man! What an awesome idea!

 

Couldn't have said it better myself. I think that's so rad, I wouldn't want to sacrifice any interior room at all but i'm very very impressed by this. The fabrications guys come up with on this forum makes me feel like an idiot.

 

Wow, nice. Would've never even thought of that.

 

Thanks for all the responses guys. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and I have already tested it on the trail and it is very sturdy. I will get some good pictures of the complete project today.

As for the loss of storage space, you do lose some, but there is still room between the tire and tailgate to fit some stuff. I can still open the little storage area door a decent amount to get to everything in there too.

 

Thats a great idea now only if I didn't have two kids to take with me?

I bet the stock tire mount on the tail gate could hold one of them??