[HO455]

Now the hard side seat back was done its on to the easy side. Once bolted to the hinge it was apparent there was an alignment problem. The gap between the two seat backs was 7/8" at the bottom and 1 & 3/16" at the top. (Photo #1) The fix was to elongate the holes in the hinge to allow the seat back to sit straight. (Photo #2) This may have been the result of using seats from one Burban and the hinge from another. (Although the holes in both hinges and seat backs don't have the best alignment. Some of that "Great GM feeling" from the seventies) The hinge that came with the seats was tweaked pretty bad where the seat backs meet is why I ended up getting a second one.

Now the seat sat straight the next issue was the latch loop on the seat back wouldn't clear the latch base. (Photo #3). The photo makes it look worse than it was. My fix for this was to grind the bottom of the latch base down. A minute on the belt grinder was all that was needed as the base is aluminum. (Photo #4). I looked to see if I had mounted the seat backs sightly more to the driver's side if the loop would have cleared. There was only an 1/8"-3/16" of room on the other side and it might have been enough, but then the loop would have rubbed the door panel when you put seat back down. I decided this is the better trade off.

After getting the base to clear I had to modify the hook in the latch the way I did the other side. The last photo shows how I needed to hook to sit in the latch to work correctly. It was just a matter of marking and drilling the holes to bolt the latch down and this side of the seat back was done.