Buying Advice Seat needed for Bolens G174

[Rod in Forfar]

My Bolens/Iseki has gotten along well with its original seat until I started using it with a dump box to carry the 25 gallon garden watering tank and pump (with balancing weights on the front). The pan is crumbling to where it needs replacement.

The new seat must pivot forward, of course, but it also has to be sized to allow not only operation of the controls, but also my complex procedure for hopping onto and off the tractor from the left. Princess Auto has lots of seats, but I can't tell from the boxes if they have the hardware I need to mount them on the Bolens.

Ten years ago I spent about $300 on a new seat for my Kubota B7510 and it was a good investment. That model would be too wide for the Bolens, I think.

Advice?

It's a rainy day in spring, so this is a bit time-sensitive.

Thanks,

Rod in Forfar

 

[Rod in Forfar]

At the local TSC store I selected a Turkish-made seat for about $185 CDN plus taxes.



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With no clear idea of how to mount the seat, I cut a pair of 12" pieces of 2x2 angle iron, but needed to establish some clearance at the rear of the seat, so I ripped the 2x2 on a slight angle with my 14" cut-off saw. The second one was a mirror image, but that meant bolting the 2x2 to the back of the blade track and cutting from there. This popped the breaker a number of times until I learned to move the piece along the track to decrease blade contact.






The best threaded holes on the seat bottom left the bars too close together to fit the pin with its two rubber bushings. The seat was also at a very uncomfortable angle, so it needed to come up about an inch at the front. I flattened a couple of 1 1/4" cross sections of angle and drilled some holes in them on the drill press. That widened the assembly enough to fit the pin-and-tube structure of the tractor.


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The Bolens was pressed into watering duties when the old Ranger's carburetor quit. Turns out it's pretty good at it, now that the seat is in place.