Supremely Powerful Seats - Dec 9, 2005

This evening I finished restoring the power seat track assemblies. I had been afraid of them for a long time, but once I got into them, they were no big deal. The seat drive transmission could be another matter though....

Shown here are the before and after versions. I had to grind a notch in each side of the upper frame in order to remove the little drive gear box. The pivot pins must be riveted in place after the gearbox was installed by the manufacturer, because it wouldn't come out any other way.

I did them one at a time so I could use the other as reference. Once disassembled, I soaked the assembly and slide track in chemicals to move the old hardened grease. Both the up/down and front/back motions were almost completely frozen on these. I then bead blasted it in the cabinet, and then aired it off while working it up and down to remove all the grit. It then worked perfectly, like it had never been bad. I painted it with gloss black Rust Oleum and let it dry overnight. They turned out looking pretty good. It's wintertime and my progress really slows down, so i was glad to get something like this done. Always plenty else to do this time of year, but I'm looking forward to getting more of these things accomplished that I can do indoors. Next I will see if the seat drive motor and transmission are salvageable or not.

I sold the '50 Plymouth, and then last weekend I bought two 1970 Cadillacs. Addiction is a powerful thing, but I guess there are plenty of worse things in this world to be addicted to than automobiles!