Thursday, May 22, 2008

Leg Room!!!


Being just shy of 6' 5" tall. The fox body mustang is a little tight for me. So I had to "adjust" things a little bit. When I had my 90 lx I found out that if you unbolt the front seat there is another set of bolt holes in the bottom of the seat that will let you relocate the seat back about an inch and a half. The non power seat cars used an all steel bracket, but not too sturdy. I must have broke a dozen of them before I sold that car. What happens is that by moving the seat back it puts a lot of pressure on the front of the bracket because there is less support in the back. When I went to make the same alteration in the GT, I found that the power seat bracket has aluminum runners along the top, nowhere near sturdy enough to handle the pressure. So here is what I did....

First: unbolt the seat and remove it from the car.

seperate the seat bracket from the seat.

you will notice that on the bottom of the seat frame there are two front bolt holes, the two rear bolt holes (that you just unbolted) and two more holes about an inch and a half forward of the rear holes.

fit the seat bracket back up to the seat frame aligning the rear holes in the bracket to the forward set of holes.

you are going to need to drill new front holes in the bracket, so mark the location of the forward bolt holes on the bracket, then take it back apart and drill your holes out.

especially on the power seat bracket, you are going to have to re-inforce the bracket, or it will break.

i took a couple pieces of steel strap that I had laying around to make reinforcement plates.

the straps were about an inch wide and probably 1/4" thick.

I couldn't tell you how to make them fit on the steel bracket (too many years gone by) but on the aluminum bracket there is a channel that these straps will fit it.

I simply shaped them up a bit with the angle grinder until they fit into the channel, drilled out the bolt holes and then fit them in.

Turned out that my bolts were not quite long enough, so I recessed the bolt holes just enough to get some turns on the bolts and snug everything up good.

bolt it all back together and re-install it in the car.

Unlike the seat track extenders that you can buy. This mod is pretty much free, if you can find a couple steel straps. More importantly it doesn't raise the seat level. The extenders lift the seat nearly an inch.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that if your wanting more leg room, you don't want to sacrifice head room....

This mod is super easy and only took a couple hours total. My seat is stronger now and I have more than enough room, the Mustang is actually the only car I have that I don't have to have the seat back all the way.

Now I just gotta get the driver's seat reupholstered and call it good!!!!

Here is another article on how to do this mod.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your such a handy (crafty) metal man to have around.