lowering seat

captainrb · 05-18-2008, 11:35 AM

I'm lowering my late model sport seat in a '73 coupe with old style mounting points.
I have made some adptors that bolt to the old mounting points and the late model seat. this works ok but the seat is just too high. My Question is has anyone welded brackets to the floor. Is there concern that the seat might break loose from the floor
( in a crash), because the floor material is too light and won't support the seat properly.

chrisp · 05-18-2008, 12:07 PM

don't go to the floor it's too thin. weld in a substructure just above the floor pan. get some tubing (1" square) and span the side sill and the center tunnel. Mount some flat sheet to that and then the seat on top of that. This will also give you a great deal of protection from something coming up from underneath in a shunt. You're only going to be 1" off the floor.

Watch welding to the center tunnel. There are fuel lines in there, right up against the side of the tunnel you are welding to.

4sd911 · 05-18-2008, 10:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrisp

Watch welding to the center tunnel. There are fuel lines in there, right up against the side of the tunnel you are welding to.

What exactly do you do to prevent heating up the fuel lines. I would think removing and/or replacing the fuel lines would be a major job. Being those lines are enclosed by a additional sheet of metal inside the tunnel makes access harder. My '74's lines are plastic on top of that.

chrisp · 05-19-2008, 07:11 AM

to be honest, I'm not sure what you would do. My mine were severed during removal of the factory seat mounts (drill bit popped them) so my lines were out of the car when we welded the new seat mount back in. I would think that with really short weld areas and time to cool between each weld you should be ok.

If you take your shifter off the center tunnel you can peer in and see where everything is situated and get a good idea for what areas to avoid. You might even be able to fish something even to lift the fuel off the wall of the tunnel and give a little air gap to the weld area.

4sd911 · 05-19-2008, 07:56 AM

Did you do the work? How hard is it to replace the fuel lines, and did you use factory plastic type? I've lowered my seats by bolting square aluminum to the floor and using large washers on the bottom for reinforcement and on top between the floor and aluminum to set height. I'd rather use your method but with fuel lines on one side and electric wires on the other side I didn't want to burn them up.