With the family growing to 5 kids now, we were really feeling the inconvenience of not having quick pass through to the third row. We had been making due with having the kids in the 3rd row climb over the folded center seat, but add backpacks or anything else to the equation and that becomes a much more tedious task. After looking at parts diagrams it seemed that the center back rest should have an easy enough time coming off and that was validated after about 30 minutes of playing around with disassembling various parts until the whole piece slid out.
Of course why stop there, the bottom panel under the middle row seemed to be a separate piece from the main unit, so a little prying and removal of screws showed that to be true.
The steel structure clearly goes all the way over both the center and outside seat, but the cushion and leather could easily be played with/cut/modified to just cover the outside seat.
So where should I go from here? Retreat and reassemble the bottom and keep the whole bench and just take the added benefit of removing the backrest? Or should I continue the surgery and cut the frame under the middle seat, clean up the exposed areas with some abs plastic and get true walk-through access? Im not worried about losing structural rigidity because there is another large frame piece running north to south in the same direction as the outermost rube (can be seen just under the cushion in the shot above).
I love the idea of keeping full seat functionality with this route (side airbag, tumble forward/back/ slide forward/back), even if its means not necessarily having totally symmetrical seats on each side, but I don't want to end up creating a giant mess either. Thanks in advance for any advice/insights I could use before proceeding any further.
Of course why stop there, the bottom panel under the middle row seemed to be a separate piece from the main unit, so a little prying and removal of screws showed that to be true.
The steel structure clearly goes all the way over both the center and outside seat, but the cushion and leather could easily be played with/cut/modified to just cover the outside seat.
So where should I go from here? Retreat and reassemble the bottom and keep the whole bench and just take the added benefit of removing the backrest? Or should I continue the surgery and cut the frame under the middle seat, clean up the exposed areas with some abs plastic and get true walk-through access? Im not worried about losing structural rigidity because there is another large frame piece running north to south in the same direction as the outermost rube (can be seen just under the cushion in the shot above).
I love the idea of keeping full seat functionality with this route (side airbag, tumble forward/back/ slide forward/back), even if its means not necessarily having totally symmetrical seats on each side, but I don't want to end up creating a giant mess either. Thanks in advance for any advice/insights I could use before proceeding any further.