Seat. We have been looking at seat options for a while now. The recovered standard seats are fine but offer little by way of long distance support or neck restraint in event of a prang. What’s more, Big Mc installed the three-point seatbelt mounting points but there is little point using them if we don’t have high back seats. Medic fitted the 69 seats to his car a while back and they look great. This got us thinking…
Reading other project threads, the options appear to be using the ‘69 or later high back seat or falcon ute seats; ute seats so you get the recline forward option. BA or later Falcon seem to be the go with XR or the FPV models coming with side bolsters and leather for some models. But, all of them come with either XR or FPV embroidered or embossed into them; not handy for a Mustang. You will have to find a solution for the seat tracks as the standard F mounting platform will not bolt straight in and even if it did, it will result in you sitting about 100mm higher. Just on that, I measured the headroom between the XR seat (less platform) and the standard seat with new buns. I would say that headroom is about 5mm less in the XR option; acceptable for me as I shrink in old age.
A friend used the ‘69 seats with the new TMI sports buns. The seats bolt straight in on the standard tracks/rails. He had them recovered in leather and this looks great but was costly and he found the seats a little wide as they fouled the armrest when the door was closed. Costs: seats $500, TMI buns at $150, recovering in leather $1300= $2950. BA seats: seats $250, sliders $70, bits to fit $20, recovering in leather $1300= $1640. BA seats here we come! Note, we did not use the electric adjustments or the platform where the electric motors are mounted.
Ronin had a pair of BA XR ute seats and sliders that we took off his hands AND he dropped them down prior to the show in February. First step was to remove the plastic trim. Make sure you remove the centre cap on the seat lumbar adjusting knob. There is a phillips head screw under the cap that needs to come out before you pull the knob free. All knobs will pull free with the side trim unbolting and unscrewing. A couple of bolts connect the seat base from the back. Just on the outer side trim, they all come with a hole for the forward/rear electric adjustment. Not sure how I am going to cover this or if I will bother at all.
After removing the head rests (they just pull out if you depress the tab on the side), the next bit to come off is the plastic trim on the rear of the seat. After removing the screws at the base of the trim, carefully lift one side and push use a screwdriver or similar to feel for the plastic side tab toward the middle of the seat that holds it to the frame. Push the tab in and it will disconnect. Do the same for the other side and with these free, the trim should slide down and away. Notice in the image how the hook shaped tabs at the top of the trim keep it secured to the top of the frame
With the back trim off, you can access the headrest tubes (the things the headrest metal posts slide in). These will push out from inside the seat if you squeeze and push the end of the plastic tubes. At the bottom of this shot, you can see the lower end of a tube that I had already removed. The remaining tube is still installed, just behind the seat frame toward the top of the shot.
There is no need to remove any of the lumbar adjusting sling or springs.
With the trim removed it is upholstery ‘degloving’ time. This is really straightforward as there are no hog rings or wire listing to be cut here (thank god says Nuts); this is a modern seat designed to be installed in three-minute stations. The upholstery is held taut on the edge of the frame by lengths of small C shaped plastic channel that are sewn across the edge of the cover. Carefully lever these off and you are away.
An example of the plastic C channels that hold the edge of the seat cover in place on the frame
As I mentioned, no hogs rings here. Industrial velcro (it is probably called something else but it works the same) hold the upholstery into the valleys of the panels as shown here. Hold the bottom layer close to where you are separating it to avoid damaging it:
The blue hook rail is in the valley of the seat foam and gives the cover the shape along with the cut of the foam.
With the upholstery off the seat, the foams simply pulls away from the frame tubes; that’s it. You should now have a frame (which looks to be well made) the foam and the upholstery.
A shot of the rear frame
I used lengths of 5mm plate and mounted these over the original XR seat bolts.
In a later shot you might notice that the plate is not centred around these bolts. It is slightly offset toward the centre of the seat for two reasons; the XR bolt pattern is not a square, being slightly narrower at the front. Secondly, to fit the seat rails at 355mm centres, they could not be centred with the XR bolts. The seat holes in a ‘67-68 Mustang are laid out in a 355mm square pattern.
Here is a shot of the seat rails mounted to the 5mm plate. I mounted them upside down on the first attempt-doh!:
And how they are finished
A couple of things I had to do to make the universal sliders work:
I bolted the sliders to the plate. You could weld them if you were more confident than me that you would not wreck them.
I ground down the XR mounting bolts flush with the nut on the plate at the rear to allow clearance of the slider as it extended.
I slotted the mounting holes in the plate to allow for some adjustment.
I tack welded the head of the new mounting bolts (5/16th UNC x 1.25inch) to the seat rails to make it easier to install the seats in the car (like the original seats).
We will hopefully get the seats recovered in the next couple of weeks. H had reign over the design so go ask her if you have a question. I did veto pretty quickly the talk of the pink embroidered horses. The upholsterer noted that as these seats have the plastic trim on the back that you could get away with using one large hide as opposed to two. At roughly $300 per hide that is a good saving and another vote in favour of this option.
Take anyone those blokes....