This article is being written for anyone who is thinking of purchasing an LMI kit for raising the rear seat in their 97 and up F-150 Super cabs. This is my experience of the installation of this kit. I called LMI, who I believe is the only company who manufactures a kit for raising the rear seat in a late model F-150. I was told on the phone that the installation process should only take about an hour or so.

The instructions are pretty clear, but leave a bit to be desired. The drawings/sketches are done by hand which did not impress me. I do C.A.D. work and thought about drawing up a good set and seeing if they would be interested in buying them from me, but I never did.

You start by removing the bolts that hold the bottom part of the rear seat to the floor and pull the whole seat out of the truck. This is very simple and you really do not need instructions for the removal process. Next you remove the seatback from the wall. The seatback is held on by 2 bolts I believe and then you can pull up on the seatback and forward to get it off the wall.

Keep track of which bolts came out of what holes, as you will use them all later.

The seat kit consists of 5 pieces. 2 end support brackets, 2 rear (almost center) support brackets, and one center support bracket that mounts to the floor.

This is where I encountered my first problem. The 2 rear support brackets which are "U shaped", have a hole on each side. One bolt goes through one hole and mounts the bracket to the stock hole in the floor near the back wall, and the other hole is for the seat to be bolted to. When they drilled the holes in these 2 brackets, I was told the "driller/machinist" made the holes too small. I could not get the bolts through the holes. I had to take them to a friends machine shop to put the brackets in a drill press to re-size them. It takes a pretty big bit for this large hole. After that was done, the brackets fit fine.

Next you mount the 2 end brackets to the floor using the stock bolts. 2 bolts per end. Also, at this time you bolt the center support bracket to the floor (2 bolts). Do not tighten any of the bolts completely as you will need to have some "slack" to move/adjust everything at the end.

Now you can mount the seatback, back onto the rear window wall. After you have the seatback on and all the supplied support brackets in place you are ready to lift the seat bottom assembly back into the cab and up onto all the support brackets. At this point, follow the instructions and use the hardware/bolts supplied in the kit to bolt the seat assembly to the support brackets. This takes a bit of fine tuning and aligning of the seat holes and the bracket holes to match up and is why you don't want to tighten the brackets completely prior to this.

The center support bracket which is mounted to the floor, can be a little tricky. It is actually 2 pieces that come assembled but with the bolts loose for adjustment. It helps to have 2 people doing this job, but is not necessary.

Once all bolts are in place and the seat is stable, tighten them all up and you are finished!

I went with the 3" raise kit, but you can get the kit in a 2" and 4" raise also. As you can see, I did some audio work and needed the kit to raise the seat so I could slide the sub box underneath for plenty of clearance. I am very happy with the results.

This installation process took me approximately 7 hours to complete due to the brackets not having the correct sized holes already drilled and having to go have them drilled out myself. Fortunately I knew someone with a large drill press and could do this myself.

I spoke with "Lee", the owner of LMI, who did refund me $25 for the trouble I had with the brackets not fitting and he assured me that they remedied the problem of the wrong sized holes from this point on. Overall, I am very pleased with the results!

Hope those of you who install/purchase this kit enjoy it as well!

Sean Steele

1. Seat kit parts - The two small braces in the middle of the image are mounted against the back wall and the two stock bolts go through the end of each brace. Note that these are the two braces that I had to "drill out" in order to complete the installation (shown below).
2. Bad bracket holes - Here's a picture of the bracket with one good drilled out bolt hole and one that clearly didn't fit. What a pain!
3. All brackets installed - Here are the five pieces of the kit (two rear support brackets, center bracket and two end support brackets) once installation is complete, absent is the seat, of course. At this point, you just set the seat down on top of all of this and bolt it on!
4. Seat back in - here is a picture once the seat has been re-bolted in place.
5. Close-up - of the kit once installation is complete.
6. From the driver's side... - you can see the center support bracket better and the rear support brackets, plus one of the end support brackets.
7. With the sub box installed - here's the sub box before any covering with tan carpet to match (sold seperately). Fits nicely under there!