Thinking about rear seat removal and camping in a 172 and wondered if anyone had tried putting zippers in the seat bottom and backs of the rear seat and put their ground pads for sleeping bags in place of the foam cushions. That way you would have nice cushions in the rear seats and ground pads for sleeping bags with no extra weight . What do you think?

tmodeltommy wrote:Thinking about rear seat removal and camping in a 172 and wondered if anyone had tried putting zippers in the seat bottom and backs of the rear seat and put their ground pads for sleeping bags in place of the foam cushions. That way you would have nice cushions in the rear seats and ground pads for sleeping bags with no extra weight . What do you think?

I think that you're better served by completely removing the entire seat frame and leaving it in the hangar. No one should be riding in the back anyway

Flying New England to Alaska in a Taylorcraft I tried the same thing with the front bench seat. (Yanking the cushions altogether and sitting on a folded up sleeping pad instead.) I almost committed to the flight that way because space was such a premium, but in the end it was just too uncomfortable for 60 hours of flying. And I can generally put up with a fair bit of discomfort in trade for being light and efficient.

Good thing about sleeping pads is they tuck just about anywhere, and don't do much of anything to your CG.

A guy I kow took all the upholstery,cushions & etc off the rear seat framework in his C180, and had the bottom and back skinned with Ceconite. He then had his wife sew up a couple removable cushions for it. Just about as comfortable as the stock set-up, and much lighter. Maybe something lke that would work for you.
Or if it's just two people going camping, just do as someone else suggested & remove the rear seat, period.