Scheel-man into your Tacoma, new member intro

You are not wrong. My dad's John Deere sit down mower did have the seat bottom that hinged up.

For our purposes it works in our favor because now we can design a storage box that is seat accessible.

 

Like this...

 

AIRBAG GO BOOM

The majority of us drive around with airbags in our vehicles without ever actually experiencing an airbag being deployed. Ourselves included.

When working on solutions for aftermarket seats we needed to fully understand what we were designing around. Particularly the side airbag, otherwise known as the “Thorax Airbag”, which we think was developed to save your organs from being crushed…you know, for organ harvesting. Hmm.

The Toyota FSM gives plenty of details of hoe the airbag works but it doesn’t give out the entire recipe for the secret sauce. You have to know how to read the tea leaves Toyota peppers around and whatever info you can’t get you need to find out for yourself. Understanding how/when and under what parameters the airbag does go off, at least on Toyota vehicles, was important for us to fully understand what we were developing for.

Now, Toyota has explicit instructions for detonating old airbags and it involves FIVE old tires. Seemed overkill at the time but after blowing one up it seemed very obvious that the FIVE tires were definitely required to absorb the explosion AND the noise. For us, we needed a better understanding of what the side airbag does in an accident and what is need to detonate.

We have this image in our heads when designing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Iwu1eEJPd4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVMbJyV7EnI

 

Second customer install, driver side on a 2022 Tacoma Access Cab.

Here you can see the gray scheel-man seat using OEM seat rails and NO dash lights illuminated due to the upgrade.

Gotta say, this setup looks really good in there and the owner is going to appreciate the firmer seat for those very long trips.

 

I'll keep my OEM airbags, thx.

 

Occupancy sensors are designed differently for the DRIVER SIDE Toyota seats. Their purpose is to magnetically track the position of the seat. Too far forward and the airbag is shut off. There is an early "U" shaped hall effect sensor found on most early airbag equipped Toyota vehicles. Later it was changed to the magnet type and was easier to integrate into the rail design.

The Tolerance Stack jumper harness uses all OE pins and connectors to convert from one style sensor to the other. In our case the reason for the development is when you are not using the original slide rails your vehicle came with, we don't usually have control on what the slide rail came with, sensor wise. This jumper cable guarantees you have the proper connector for the SRS system to function correctly.

https://www.tolerance-stack.com/product-page/occupancy-conversion-jumper-harness

 

If you want to keep your airbags functional, you can do an OEM GT86 seat swap with a planted seat bracket. https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/gt86-seats-in-2019-tacoma.826646/ Here is a thread of my seat swap, very easy besides swapping wiring over and drilling rivets out.

 

Great seats. I have a Scheel-Mann drivers seat because I had back issues and these seats are touted as orthopedic seats. Absolutely worth the money for me.

I'll be ordering the module, will be great to not have that airbag light anymore.

 

aaaaaaaand shipped. thanks for the order.

 

OK TECHNICALLY its for a 5th Gen 4Runner but its likely very similar to the 4th Gen Tacoma so some may find this interesting...

It’s very likely the most requests we have been getting for a better seating solution has been for the 5th Gen 4Runner.

Although we currently have solutions for the 2nd/3rd Gen Tacoma, the FJ Cruiser, and the 4th Gen 4Runner driver seat, we knew needed to attack the 5th Gen 4Runners.

The 5th Gen seat mounting solutions for scheel-mann seats is well under way and about to go into pre-production for final testing. The process to make this happen is very time consuming so each new variation involves its own sets of challenges. For one, we actually need the vehicle on site and be able to take things apart so that we can start the 3D scanning process. That then involves many hours of making it into an accurate file we can build onto. From here it’s just about making the seat pan that does what we want it to do. That’s the tougher part. We do not just make simple mounts. We look to solve problems for the installer.

We are closer to have a 5th Gen 4Runner solution very soon.

 

My credit card just wept.

 

happy tears or sad tears? (Sarah Marshall reference)

 

PDF Instruction Downloads

Although we have only been officially shipping out our seat bracket adapters for scheel-mann aftermarket seats, we’ve needed some real world feedback from the few customers we now have in order to pit the final pieces together to complete our PDF instruction downloads.

We now have all of the problems trying to put aftermarket seats into the 2nd and 3rd Gen Tacoma and we can now take care of all years of the FJ Cruiser.

Now that our instructions are public folks can peruse through the manual to see if it’s a project they feel they can tackle on their own or if the instructions just get handed over to a suitable install shop.

Hopefully we have developed a product that not only can be installed by a competent shop but could also be installed at home by someone only slightly less confident. Instructions should nudge that over to success.

https://www.tolerance-stack.com/technical

 

This is where the joy for us really starts to set in. When we hear back from customers sharing how the stuff we develop can help change their lives. Its not being hyperbolic. These seats are such as massive upgrade to the OEM seats found in the Tacoma.

Here you see a pair of scheel-man seats with Tolerance Stack mounting kits perfectly installed. Had to make sure the hunting dog sits in style too on those very long trips to bag some pheasant.

 

Not much needed as far as hardware for the driver side seat mounts for Tacomas and FJ Cruisers. Each tray is 3D printed to organize all hardware. Yeah it's not that big of a deal but it does help illustrate that we are indeed trying to put together a very complete kit.

 

Even Canadians need the improvement over OEM seats in their Tacoma. This one got scheel-mann driver side in black leather oh man does it look good in there. Better yet it feels good in there because back issues were the primary reason for the upgrade.
https://www.tolerance-stack.com/category/tacoma-products

 

For all of those wanted to enjoy the cooling/seats of scheel-mann's Klima seats for your Toyota truck, we have been non-stop getting the seat mount design nailed before we went into production.

For each major iteration we would then 3D print a 1:1 sample to test fit before going we start cutting any metal.

Pricing for Klima seat packages are being worked on now and should be on the site within the next week or two. Early quotes for the Klima packages will be going out slightly sooner than that.

 

How the sausage is made

It’s been a silent week for us as we settle into a new place and enjoy time off with our families for Thanksgiving. But it’s a new week and new projects. Since there is some time before any other announcements it might be a good time to detail a little but on how the “sausage is made” so to speak.

The Side Panels CAN serve two functions. The first function is to hide all of the bits and bobs necessary to install a scheel-mann seat into your Toyota truck. It’s not that it’s unsightly, it just doesn’t look “finished” without the side panel. The second thing it does is act as a mounting plate for certain accessories. For example: flashlight, small fire extinguisher, knife, small first aid kit, flares, etc.

Now to the process. Almost every model of Toyota will get a specific side panel only because there are very minor differences between seat options and floor between models. So once the scheel-mann seat is in the point is to look like it belongs.

First thing after the design is to have the panels laser cut out of 3/16” aluminum. 3/16” thick aluminum was chosen because we figured that most looking to mount accessories technically could just drill a hole and bolt/nut it but the cooler method would be to drill the minor of the hole and then tap to the major of the bolt. This way you have tapped threads ready to go. Nice and clean and you don’t need access to the back of the panel.

Once the panels are laser cut they are deburred and tumbled for a few hours. This process gives us the final look we were aiming for. Having perfect machined CNC endmill cuts just didn’t give the softer look we were going for.

Next up was to design laser marking “jigs” since the panels had to be made flat on the side we needed for the fiber laser we were using. This was an easy process that just required a quick 3D print. Once the print is in place the jig acts as a guide. For the laser marking.

The fiber laser does 3 passes to give the panel the depth that gives the logo the right amount of noticeability without being an annoying cutout or being bright white when laser marking after anodize. With the fiber laser marking we now have a tactile feel to the logo that is subtle but apparent.

And finally the panels are then sent out to our local anodize shop where they dunk into an acid to remove any and ll materials that would affect the look we want. Ts then dunked into the anodize black dye tank and then the clearing tank. Once dried you can see the final piece in the last image.

Now we have the perfect look. We get the brand imaging we are looking for without being obnoxious. Its perfect we think.

 

Maybe it has been mentioned here (or the vendor website) and I missed it, but this won't work on regular cab 2nd gen Tacomas equipped with OEM bench seat. The occupant sensor setup is a completely different animal with the bench seat (in seat bladder type). If you have the rare regular cab 2nd gen with OEM buckets then this will work.

I say this as someone who installed scheel-manns in a regular cab 2nd gen that originally had a bench seat and it was a lot of work to get it to all work properly.

 

And realistically waaaaay better money spent on amazing seats than a King or whatever lift that never gets used. Or only used for mall crawling. Not slamming Kings at all just actual everyday use of the lift vs the seats.