Quote:
Originally Posted by Rickysnickers
Yeah, I'm looking for some similar seats for my '57 as well. I will be interested to see how you mount them.
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If you pull the trigger on some, get the 2003-2007 seats with power bases. There seems to be a common failure of the retractor in the 1999-2000 seats that will cause the belt to jam. There are plenty of repair businesses for that issue and the cost is about $70, but you have to disassemble the seat to get to it.
The power bases will make all the difference. The tracks mount flat to the floor. I've been fitting mine tonight and made a template to drill my holes. The front two feet will go on the factory rib used for the original Chevy seat. The rears will go to the floor, ahead of the back rib, though I think I will use a 1" pedestal to keep the tracks flat.
It looks like the seats mounted to studs protruding from the donor truck floor, as the tracks have recesses for the mounting nuts. Once I get my holes drilled, I'll make new anchor plates to go under the 1957 floor pan, weld nuts to the plates and install studs to mount the seats. The last anchor plates I made were from 3/16" plate steel, with the edges bent away from the floor pan to keep from cutting the floor steel in the case of a collision. The studs can't be too long or they will protrude from recess and interfere with the tracks. I tack the anchor plates to the underside of the floor pan, so installing or removing the seats is a one person operation.
The seats get power through two wires, a 14ga orange wire is the + and a 14ga black wire is the - . I added some leads to these and hooked up to my battery charger to move the tracks back and forth.
I'll take pictures as I do it and post them as I go. I used a piece of white foam poster board from Walmart to make my template. I laid the driver's seat on its back and clamped the board to the tracks while I traced the footprint of the tracks with my Sharpie marker and marked the location of the mounting holes.
I would assume the passenger side is a mirror image of the driver's side, but the foam board is less than $3 per sheet, so if it is different, it isn't a huge expense to make a separate template.
-Joe