What year explorer bucket seats will fit in my 2003 ranger extended cab and will the center console fit between them?

 

Welcome to the forum

Yes, seats and console should fit, I don't think every combination has been tried yet, but in general they do fit

The seat tracks are often welded to the seats after 2001 or so, you may have to do some cutting and/or drilling to match things up

 

I think you want to stay below 2002 on the Explorer seats. Not absolutely sure on this, but I believe the '02+ (when they went to IRS) generation uses a different bolt pattern for the tracks.

Anything '01 down should match up to your extended cab bolt pattern.
On my '99, the seat belt anchor is designed to bolt directly to the Ranger seat. The Explorer seats use a rail that's bolted to the transmission tunnel and the anchor slides along that. You can either weld in a secure tab to the body at that point and run a new bolt through that for the anchor, or you can drill a hole into the Explorer seat's pan and bolt it there.
Assuming the new seats are power, make sure that you get a section of the body side wiring harness that plugs into the seat so you have something to wire into, then attach it to a good source of power and ground. Be sure to use a dedicated fuse. I think the Explorer's drivers seat was on a 30A fuse from the factory.

 

The REALLY nice seats come in the 2001 Explorers. They're like riding on pillows. The earlier Limited edition seats are nice too, but they're usually pretty torn up by now.

FWIW, I'm running a 2002-2005 (IRS Explorer) console in my truck. It doesn't match the dash like the older consoles do, however it's not that bad and it's a wider console so you have more space.

 

Fordzilla - what was your solution for the seat belt anchor?

 

I reused my Ranger belts because of the pre-tensioners. There was some pretty thick steel on the frame of the seats, so I drilled a hole for the bolt, and a smaller hole for the tab on the pretensioner. Grade 8 bolts, lock washers and lock nuts plus Loctite and everything fits and looks like factory.

 

Is there a difference in the pretensioners between the two seat types? I drilled a hole in the Explorer seat frame (actually expanded an existing one), then bolted the stock Explorer pretensioner to that using the original bolt that was holding it onto the sliding rail.

 

Not sure, the seats I pulled didn't have pretensioners, just regular buckles on the rail.