1949 CJ-3A Corbeau Seats - Corbeau Cockpit

Seats are an important part of any vehicle, whether they are worn in just right, covered in your favorite sheep's wool covers, leather bound with internal heaters, or hug-you-tight race seats, they all must make the driver feel safe and sound. Years back I got to ride in a friend's rock buggy, and his Corbeau Baja suspension seats impressed me. They were nothing special, but nothing less than perfectly comfortable for me. The black vinyl covering was durable for an open-topped rig, the seats were wide enough to spend all day in, and the side bolsters and suspension design held me in place happily over rough terrain. I have tried a few different seats from Corbeau, and none fit me as good or hold up as well as the Baja SS seats when it comes to a trail rig.

The old seats in the coffee-colored Flatty had seen better days. They were covered in faded sheep's wool and cat hair, and they pushed me too far forward into the steering wheel and upwards into the roof line.

The old seats in the coffee-colored Flatty had seen better days. They were covered in fade

When I dragged home this little '49 CJ-3A project, one of the first orders of business was new seats. It came with seats out of a boat that were covered with nasty seat covers full of cat hair. They were mounted so far forward that I could barely get in. I immediately scanned Corbeau's website and found that the company offered its same Baja suspension seats in a low-back version, perfect for an old CJ.

In a short time I had two new black low-backs on my doorstep, but then I realized that to make these seats the safest place to ride in the Jeep, I needed to not just mount them, but literally build them into the Jeep. This meant tying their internal steel frame into a custom-built cage. Most old flatfenders have a big 2-inch tube rollbar and flat-like-a-church-pew seats, but I wanted something different, a less-is-more type of cage in my rig, as in less cage equals more space in the already tight-fitting little Jeep. I ordered up a few sticks of DOM tubing, and in a few days I went from cat hair claustrophobia to a comfortable cockpit.