Seat Ques. for Dave Darling or ?

[Barber Dave]

My drivers seat on my 73 dosen"t fit into the cut out area of the backpad. It hits on the side closest to the drivers door. The other side toward the passenger door fit well. I thought ( may be) it was a alignment problem, (Seat tracks) found them to be none adjustable. Even switched pass. seat for driver ,thought they could have beeen switched by P.O. That didn"t work. Yesterday a friend ( long time 914 owner said " you have two passenger seats" that there is a difference between the passenger seat and the drivers seat enough to cause it to hit the back pad on that side. Is this correct ? Is there any way to easly identify the drivers seat from the passsenger seat. Also seat and back pad are riped where they hit. Sorry to ramble on but this has bothered me for a year. Dave

[John2kx]

Dave,

I seem to remember reading that there is a difference in the area of seat where parking brake handle is located (for drivers seat).......like a dimple or cutout to allow clearance in this area.

Did a search for post but could not locate it here. My '73 has seats purchased from another 914 but they appear to be identical and don't have a notch in the area described above. Maybe I've got two drivers seats? Clearance at backpad is even all the way across on both of mine. Then again, this so called notch may have been on the early cars.

Maybe you can do some adjusting with rails that mount to seat, i.e. loosen bolts and shift seat in a clockwise direction. I seem to remember having some play between the bolts and holes for this part in mine.

John

[Barber Dave]

John, Thanks for the quick reply; I tryed to ajust seat the mounting fram anchored to the floor. No luck! Seat hits the back pad just before it narrows for the head rest,just on that one side other fits prefect. Also when seated i seem to be off center in relation to the steering wheel. ???????????? is a puzzle.
Thanks Dave
P.S. Is there a way to identify the drivers seat from the passenger seat.

[John2kx]

Dave,

Maybe I wasn't clear on my suggestion of how to adjust seat. Instead of trying to adjust "track" on chassis floor (which you've already tried), I'd try to adjust "rails" attached to seat. This would require removal of seat, loosening of 4-6 bolts attaching rail to seat and attempting to move in the direction needed to put you back at 12 o'clock.

If the holes are not big enough to get adjustment needed, you could enlarge a bit.

I've got my original '73 seats in basement. If I get some time today, I'll dig em out and check for differences.

John

[John2kx]

Another thought. Wonder if it makes a difference in which side your seat adjusting "handle" is on? I'm thinking of some offset that may be caused if installed on wrong side. I know they will fit either side......just don't know which side is correct.

I'll also check my original seats for this as well.

John

[ejm914]

On my '76 there is a very noticeable difference between R & L seats in the handbrake area. It's
apparent when looking at the seats with the drivers door open. Both adjusting handles are on
the inside rail and the centerline of the drivers seat is off to the left from the centerline of the
steering wheel by more than an inch. The car is pretty original, I'm sure this is the way it was
built. The drivers seat gets all the wear, having two passenger seats is prolly pretty common.

[Kevin Powers]

back and forth handle goes to the tunnel side of the seat, tilt on the other. there is a slight diff in the headrests, see if there is a slope on the top, lower side to the doors. also after removing the seat (i always pinch my finger holding up the little flat spring while moving the seat beyond the stop, ouch, damn) lower the tilt, loosen the bolts on the hinge to rail. you can slightly pivot the front of the rail assembly left or right.

kevin

[Barber Dave]

Bump

[Lawrence914]

Are the seats stock? Could someone have recovered them, and filled in that area with foam/cushioning?

-L

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

I was gone for the weekend...

The only real difference that I have noticed is in the handbrake handle area. The passenger's side seats make it a bit difficult to pull up the brake handle and then unwrap your fingers from it. Pretty tight. The driver's seat has a slight (never saw it) concavity there that gives you more room.

I don't recall any problems hitting the backpad with either seat in place, though. Could be one of those car-to-car differences?? Or could be that fiddling with the seat rails attachment to the bottom of the seat would fix it...

The steering axis and pedals in the car are not straight forward, and you do sit to the left of the wheel and the pedals.

--DD