Removing Seats

Heee heeeee.

and be weary of mice living in the little compartment you have to get into to get to the bolt. scared the **** out of me.

.......and on top of all the previous warnings, when removing and installing the nuts and washers, DON'T drop them between the floor metal. It's the abyss of the seat mounting process.

Oooo, that's a good one, the abyss is horrible.

The abyss dictated the purchase of the magical magnetic extention wand. One of the best tools in my tool box.

Tim

The abyss is a bad place. I never realized how poorly built mustangs were until i had to take one apart. The cowls were designed really poorly and as for the seat thing...we double prime inside and out before we even weld the floor pans, etc. together. I just never understood why there would be an open seam there. It is so easy for moisture to get in. And if anything does fall in there it will rust like crazy.

Pakrat said:

And on top of all that, if you find that the plugs are no longer there (which they aren't more often than they are) hit it up with some PB Blast and let em sit for a while. You don't want to go snapping the bolts off at the neck.

Click to expand...

Now you tell me.

Lmao, that's how it always works.

[QUOTE='69Mach1Chick]The abyss is a bad place. I never realized how poorly built mustangs were until i had to take one apart. The cowls were designed really poorly and as for the seat thing...we double prime inside and out before we even weld the floor pans, etc. together. I just never understood why there would be an open seam there. It is so easy for moisture to get in. And if anything does fall in there it will rust like crazy.[/QUOTE]

It's actually quite simple really. Ford built these as the ecno affordable by everyone cars back in the day, and no one ever expected the cars to be on the road past a 10 year mark, so building them bullet proof made no sense and would have pushed them over into a higher range sell price. You would be surpirsed at how much cost you have to take out of something just to take a little bit out of the retail price unless you want to totally give up all your profit margin.

An example from my field, I design childrens shoes. If the shoe sells for around $20 that means wholesale is around $10 and the factory charges me $5 to make it. So now someone wants to do a promotional version of it and sell it for $16, that makes cost $8 and I have to build it for $4.00. Certain costs are fixed, like labor and overhead ($1.50) meaning that $1 has to come out of my raw materials, now, that gives me a lousy $2.50 to build a pair of shoes from, not much, and there aren't a lot of places to cheapen it either. Now picture that in thousands of dollars and try to find places without sacraficing safety to make the product cost efficient. In the scope of things Ford didn't do such a bad job after all.

I guess that makes sense. They were like family cars back then, right? What do you think they would be equivalent to today?

[QUOTE='69Mach1Chick]I guess that makes sense. They were like family cars back then, right? What do you think they would be equivalent to today?[/QUOTE]

Well, it's equivalent to a... Mustang. The original was build on a Falcon (economy car) chassis, the current Mustang is built on a Fairmont (economy car) chassis. Things are rapidly changing with the upcoming 05 Mustang, and parts-sharing is a bit different now than it used to be. The new Mustang will be a world class coupe, without first being a beater that will fit a V8.

2nd Mustang said:

.......and on top of all the previous warnings, when removing and installing the nuts and washers, DON'T drop them between the floor metal. It's the abyss of the seat mounting process.

Click to expand...

Been there, done that. Thank God for magnets.

Is it just me or is it kind of scary how only four bolts hold them, and us, in?

MustangPaul said:

Been there, done that. Thank God for magnets.

Is it just me or is it kind of scary how only four bolts hold them, and us, in?

Click to expand...

Just be glad they're bolted to the floor. Ever see how the old VW bug"s bucket seats were attached to the floor pan? You'd be thanking Ford for using bolts.