Well, no matter how hard I tried she wouldn't go for the boots, so, it was back to the drawing board.
Went out to the shop yesterday and took the seat off the tractor. I removed the plate from the bottom of the seat. Here's the before photo:
The plate was set up on the front two sets of holes in the seat bottom. There's another set of holes that are threaded further back.
The mounting plate fit lined up with the back set of holes but due to the taper of the plate the second set of holes from the front edge of the seat were outside the plate. After pondering for a while I took some 3/16 steel which is the thickness of the seat mounting plate and cut out a couple small triangles. I butt welded the triangles to the edge of the plate, ground down the welds, drilled two holes, primered and painted and this is what it came out like. (I didn't have any method of duplicating that factory coating on the mounting plate so I sprayed it with some Rustoleum satin nickle paint...close enough to original for government work.)
This is the modified plate mounted in the original position.
This is the plate mounted to the back holes.
The modification lets the seat come forward 3 1/2 inches from the factory setting. Here's the seat all the way forward.
Here's the seat all the way back.
Underseat view.
The only thing I found that I need to pay attention to is if I want to tilt the seat up I need to move it forward to clear the T handle that releases the swivel. This modification will actually work for me too as I found that the seat was too far back for long term comfort when operating the backhoe. This should make it more comfortable now as I won't be hunched over trying to reach the BH control levers.
Total cost for the modification: $0 I used a piece of scrap steel and I had the paint around for other projects anyway. The nice thing is I can always put the plate back to the factory position as all of the holes are still in place and the two pieces I welded on don't project out or interfere with anything.
