HELP! Trying to remove front seat from 37 Terraplane!

sidevalve

Hi guys

Just found that the forum has migrated to here - serves me right for not visiting it more often!

Anyway, I have a problem - I have a new repro front floor mat that I want to put in my 37 Terraplane, but to do the job properly I need to remove the front seat - and I can’t! I have just spent half an hour undoing a bolt that I thought attached the seat to the car, but it appears to be one of the bolts that attaches the frame to the chassis! Mat is one of the ones that the people in CA who went out of business and sold out to Doug Wildrick made (can't remember their name but I think Doug is selling their products now?), and it is a very nice item but it needs trimming, holes cutting for the pedals and shifter, and fitting under the rocker moldings, seat brackets, etc., and I just can't do that without taking the seat out.

And I can't work out what to undo from what! Any help would be much appreciated - I can send pix of what I undid if it helps!

Cheers and thanks in advance

Alan Wesson (formerly of England, now in France!)

Jon B

Alan, I'm confused. 

Why do you need to remove the seat?  Is part of the seat holding down the mat?

I can understand that you might want to remove the seat cushion just to make it easier to install the mat.  In that case, my experience is that you have to push backwards on the seat cushion (push at the bottom of the seat where the wood frame is; the upper part is just springs and padding and that will merely compress).  There are a couple of metal clips at the front of the cushion, as I recall, which engage the wooden support below the cushion and you must push back maybe 1/8" to disengage them.

To make this easier, tip the seatbacks (if you have a coupe or brougham) forward; then the front cushion doesn't have so much to work against.  Otherwise, just sit oN the floor, brace yourself against the dashboard, and push hard!

Once the cushion moves back slightly the front can be raised, then the whole cushion pulled forward and removed.

If you actually do need to remove the entire seat, I think you have to slide the seat backward in its tracK, and then unscrew the screws in the bottom of the track, which hold the track (and thus the entire seat) to the raised portion of the floor pan.

sidevalve

Thanks Jon - this is actually 'my bad', and a development of me trying to undo the wrong seat bolt. I thought the bracket on the floor was the seat bracket, whereas it is actually welded to the floor. And as a consequence of that misunderstanding I thought the front mat went UNDERNEATH it (it did on my Kaiser). And so I thought I needed to remove the seat. However, as the shaped brackets are just part of the floor I don't need to remove the seat at all, but removing the cushions as you suggest is a really good idea, because I will be able to see better.

So - thanks! And here she is this afternoon while I was trying to get the seat out!

Cheers

Alan

lostmind

Very nice , share more photos after you get the mat in.

barrysweet52

If you remove the seat, you may like to lubricate the 2 seat slides and check the operation of the release lever. Who knows when it was last done - maybe 1937? Depending on your height you may like to consider installing seat lifting brackets. One or two inches of lift make a big difference.Barry

Jon B

What brackets are those, Barry?  Something one finds in an auto store?  Just washers under the sliding track, maybe?

Last fall I lubricated my seat tracks, possibly for the first time in 40 years.  Also found that I had erroneously located the cogwheels in the track, back in the 1970's.   The two front cogwheels were located too close to the rear of their travel, and the two rear pins were too far forward.   The result: the seat hardly moved at all, even when lubed!  So I pulled the pivot pins out, moved the cogwheels toward the center of their travel, and replace the pivot pins, which resulted in plenty of seat movement fore and aft.

Now the seat glides so easily that I seldom drive the car anymore.  It's more of a 'trip' just to take the seat out for a spin.

barrysweet52

Last year on this site or on Ebay some one was selling original spacers that lifted the front seat higher. Some one else may post a photo. I was thinking of using a thick walled square tube. Im 5"10 and sit on a cushion and still cant see the front of the car like you can with modern cars. Hudsons had plenty of headroom Im told - you can get in and out wearing a hat. Seems like a good idea to lift the seat. Barry

Huddy42

I made my own brackets out of 2" square tube, easily done with a bit of thought, cost next to nothing, just a few inches of square tube either side front and back and a few extra  bolts and nuts.